Strange Shores

41

After a second’s indecision, Ásta Ármannsdóttir invited him in, mainly out of curiosity. She suggested the sitting room but he said the kitchen would be fine and took a seat at the table. The flickering light of the television could be seen from the other room where Ásta’s husband, one Eiríkur Hjörleifsson according to the plaque on the front door, was ensconced on the sofa, glued to a British crime drama. Ásta made some good strong coffee for her guest and put a raisin sponge cake on the table. Erlendur took a slice to be polite, though he didn’t have much of a sweet tooth.

He apologised for turning up unannounced and explained that he had a particular interest in shipwrecks in the East Fjords. One had occurred in 1949 when the vessel Sigurlína from Eskifjördur had gone down with all hands. On researching the story he had noticed that Ásta’s father Ármann had known Jakob, one of the men who died, and helped to carry the coffin at his funeral. Ásta recognised the name.

‘Did he ever discuss the incident with you or your brothers?’ asked Erlendur. He knew from the records that Ásta had two brothers.

‘They both live in Reykjavík,’ she said. ‘You can ring them if you like but I don’t know if it’ll help. As far as I can remember, Dad didn’t talk much about the accident. At least, not to us kids. Actually, I wasn’t even born at the time. He might have discussed it with his friends but he wasn’t much of a talker.’

‘How did your father know Jakob? Any idea?’

‘They crewed a boat here in Djúpivogur for several years. Then Jakob moved away but they still caught up from time to time.’

‘Do you know if your father was badly affected by Jakob’s death?’

Ásta shrugged. ‘The fishermen here often used to go out in bad weather. Some of them didn’t come back. That’s life in a fishing village. I don’t think my father allowed himself to get sentimental — it wasn’t done in those days. Is it my father you’re interested in?’

‘No, not particularly,’ said Erlendur. ‘But do you remember him mentioning any unusual details about the incident?’

‘I can’t say I do.’

‘Nothing about the funeral?’

‘No, I don’t know. What are you getting at?’

‘I was discussing all this with some people from Eskifjördur, including a woman who dimly remembered your father saying he’d heard — or thought he’d heard — a noise coming from the coffin as it was being lowered into the ground.’

The woman studied Erlendur. ‘Nobody’s ever told me that,’ she said eventually.

‘No, I’m not surprised. It sounds like an old wives’ tale that got going after what happened to Jakob. He lost his wife, you see, and there were rumours that she haunted him. So that’s probably how the story started.’

‘Well, it’s the first I’ve heard of it. I knew Jakob’s wife had died but Dad never said a word about this. Not as far as I know, anyway. Are you sure it was Dad?’

‘I expect the story’s got a bit garbled. It could have been somebody else, or more likely pure invention.’

‘But you don’t think so?’

‘Oh, of course I do,’ said Erlendur quickly. ‘It’s just a minor detail of the incident. I thought I’d ask you in case it sounded familiar.’

‘Well, it doesn’t.’

‘Did he ever talk about Jakob and his wife Matthildur?’

‘Not really.’

‘Are any of your father’s friends still alive?’

‘Not these days. Well, apart from old Thórdur.’

Thórdur lived with his son and daughter-in-law about two minutes’ walk from Ásta’s house. After obtaining his address, Erlendur rose to his feet and said a hasty goodbye, adding, in a belated attempt at courtesy, that he didn’t want to keep her. He was keen to avoid sowing any unnecessary seeds of suspicion. Her husband was still sitting in front of the TV. There was a noise of gunshots and shouting. Unfortunately, Erlendur’s clumsy departure only served to make Ásta more curious about the purpose of his odd visit and request, and he was forced to answer or else dodge a barrage of questions about her father, Jakob and his wife Matthildur, about the shipwreck and exactly why Erlendur was so concerned about the incident and those involved. He sensed she was having misgivings about talking to him and before he knew it her suspicions were being directed specifically at the connection between Matthildur and her father. He couldn’t work out where this development had come from and tried unsuccessfully to clear up the misunderstanding as he paused in the doorway. But he left the woman standing at the entrance to her house, wearing a baffled expression.

Thórdur was eighty-five years old and existed in a world of silence. He was deaf as a post and no hearing aid could help him now. All he could hear was his own internal monologue, which he did not hesitate to share. In fact, he wasn’t in the least shy about talking and had a tendency to shout, as if he wanted to be sure no one would miss what he said, even if he couldn’t hear it himself. He lived in a small basement flat that his son had converted for him in his house. The son showed Erlendur downstairs and left them alone together. Erlendur had explained about his research into shipwrecks and repeated this to Thórdur who seemed pleased by the unexpected visit. His flat was nothing more than a large room containing a decent-sized bed, a TV, a desk and a washbasin. Books were piled wherever there was space.

Communicating with the deaf old man turned out to be perfectly simple. On his desk were paper and pencils, and anything Erlendur wanted to say or ask had to be written down and passed to Thórdur who answered instantly.

‘I see you’re a reader,’ was the first comment Erlendur wrote once he had established who he was and the reason for his presence.

Thórdur smiled. Apart from his deafness, he gave the appearance of being fighting fit and sharp as a tack. His head was totally bald, his nostrils were black with snuff and he pronounced his ‘r’s in a strangely throaty manner.

‘Quite right,’ he boomed. ‘I’ve collected them for years. But I doubt anyone’ll care to keep them after I’m gone. Most of them will probably end up at the dump.’

‘Pity,’ wrote Erlendur.

Thórdur agreed. ‘I remember the accident clear as day,’ he added. ‘And I remember other much worse ones more recently.’

‘Do you remember the funeral in ’49?’ wrote Erlendur, keen to keep Thórdur on track.

‘No,’ said Thórdur. ‘I wasn’t around. I was crewing a boat out of Höfn, where I lived at the time. But of course I heard all about it. The weather must have been appalling — a northerly gale and bitter frost. They were sailing so close to land that people could see the terror on their faces. If I remember right the engine of that rust bucket cut out at the worst possible moment and the boat was smashed to smithereens. The two men were thrown overboard. I doubt they could even swim — not that it would have helped them. People must have been able to hear their cries for help from the shore. Of course they did everything in their power to save them but conditions were so bad they had to give up. In the end, the cries stopped.’

Thórdur picked up a tin of snuff and offered it to Erlendur, who pinched a few grains between his fingers and sniffed them up his nose. Thórdur sprinkled a thick line on the back of his hand and snorted it up both nostrils.

‘It must have been ghastly to watch,’ he said, fiddling with the tin as if he liked to keep it nearby. ‘Utterly horrible. I mean, not being able to help in any way.’

Erlendur nodded encouragingly.

‘Anyway, the bodies were washed up on the beach, as you’d expect when a boat goes down, and they were taken to the ice house in the village. They were laid out on planks like stretchers, I believe. The idea was to keep the bodies straight when rigor mortis set in. At least, I think that was why.’

‘And they were certified dead?’ wrote Erlendur.

‘Oh yes. I gather there was some locum in the village at the time. He only had to look at their eyes to confirm they were dead. Then they were put in coffins and one of them was buried in the churchyard.’

‘Where did you learn all these details?’

‘Fellow named Ármann. Used to live here in Djúpivogur. Good friend of mine. Died years ago. Lung cancer. We both knew one of the men — Jakob — though Ármann knew him much better than me.’

‘How did you know Jakob?’ wrote Erlendur.

‘Used to bump into him out on the town when we were young. Though I never got to know him well. Never had much time for that sort, frankly. He was born in Reykjavík. Thought a lot of himself too. Quite the womaniser, and used to brag about it like young men do. Got into trouble over some of the girls he seduced. Didn’t want anything to do with them once he’d had his wicked way. But woe betide them if they dared look elsewhere. Then he could turn very nasty.’

‘Ármann was one of his pall-bearers,’ wrote Erlendur.

‘Yes, that’s right. They clubbed together for a gravestone later on. One of his friends, Pétur I think his name was, organised a whip-round among the fishermen and boat owners in the village.’

‘Ármann’s supposed to have heard a noise,’ wrote Erlendur, ‘from the coffin.’

‘Ah, so you’ve heard about that, have you?’ said Thórdur, suddenly lowering his voice. ‘It wasn’t widely known. People found it embarrassing. Ármann stopped talking about it after a while, but it gave rise to all sorts of ghost stories linked to Jakob’s late wife. That she’d got into his coffin with him and so on.’

‘People said she haunted him.’

‘That’s right. Caused the accident too. I don’t know why she was supposed to have wanted to take revenge on him, though.’

‘What exactly did Ármann hear?’ wrote Erlendur.

‘I’m really not sure,’ said Thórdur. ‘He was a bit vague.’

‘I gather it was some kind of moaning.’

‘No, that’s nonsense. It was nothing like that. I asked him once, shortly before he died, but he was very unwilling to say. I have a feeling he regretted ever mentioning it. No, it was more like gas.’

‘Gas?’

‘As if the body had some gas left inside, which is quite possible given that the man was buried so soon after he died. That’s what Ármann thought he’d heard. Not moaning. That’s a ghost story that was invented later on. And there were others who claimed the body had shifted in the coffin.’

Erlendur frowned. ‘Ármann’s daughter didn’t seem aware of any of this.’

‘Ármann told me he’d have done better to hold his tongue at the time,’ said Thórdur. ‘Of course she doesn’t want to admit it. She wants to hush it up.’

‘Maybe,’ wrote Erlendur.

‘I’ve never heard about any moaning,’ said Thórdur. ‘It would’ve taken inhuman strength to survive all that.’

‘Yes, it would,’ Erlendur blurted out aloud.

‘Mind you, there are stories of people surviving in cold like that,’ said Thórdur. ‘I once heard of a shipwreck out west, not unlike this one. Three men fell overboard from a rowing boat close to shore. The bodies were hauled out of the sea and locked up overnight in a warehouse in the village. The weather was freezing, but when they went to check on the bodies next day it turned out that two of the men had managed to climb down onto the floor during the night, though that’s as far as they got. But the third, who’d lived longest, had made it all the way to the door before he’d finally frozen stiff.’