The Darkness Knows

10

The unknown woman whispered these last words so quietly that Konrád could barely catch them. He stared at her, instantly grasping what she meant by her reference to the tanks on Öskjuhlíd: the old hot-water tanks where Sigurvin’s jeep had been found. The woman avoided his eyes, as if she had said something shameful. There was an interval of silence, broken only by a noisy car driving past. Konrád was sure he had never seen this woman before; she couldn’t have been on their radar during the original inquiry.

‘I take it you’re referring to the Sigurvin affair?’ he asked warily. ‘When you refer to the tanks?’

‘Sorry to come round at such a stupid time.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘Could I come in?’

‘Please do.’ Konrád opened the door wider and ushered her into the hall. ‘I didn’t mean to leave you standing out there in the cold like that. I’m just not used to getting visits so late in the evening.’

He glanced at his watch. It was midnight. The woman edged her way into the sitting room, still shy and diffident, gazing around her at the paintings on the walls and the shelves full of books.

‘Have a seat,’ Konrád said. ‘Would you like a coffee, maybe? Or something else?’

‘I wouldn’t mind a coffee,’ the woman said. ‘My name’s Herdís,’ she added, holding out her hand. ‘You wouldn’t have a shot of something to put in the coffee, would you? I’m a bit chilly. There’s quite a northerly blowing out there.’

‘Sure, can do,’ Konrád said.

The woman perched on a chair in the sitting room and continued to study her surroundings, while Konrád put on the coffee and dug out the bottle of vodka he kept in one of the kitchen cupboards along with the gin and the rum. He himself drank only in moderation, and then mostly red wine. He poured a generous splash of vodka into a cup, feeling puzzled by this unexpected visit. It was a mystery to him why she should have come round to see him in the middle of the night rather than going to the police. He guessed she must think he was still working on the inquiry. His name had been quite prominent in the coverage of the original investigation, when he’d had to take the role of police spokesman at times. On his way back to the sitting room, he checked on the boys, who turned out to be sound asleep, and firmly closed the door to their room.

‘Yes, it’s turning chilly,’ he remarked as he sat down and handed the woman the cup.

She took it. As the coffee wasn’t very hot, she finished it in one gulp and handed it straight back.

‘Like another?’ he asked.

Herdís nodded. Konrád went into the kitchen and fetched the coffee pot and the bottle, placing both in front of the woman. She poured a tiny splash of coffee into her cup, filled it up with vodka, drained half in one go, then finished it. Konrád waited patiently.

‘He was only nine,’ she said, once she had thawed out a bit. ‘We were very hard up. We lived in a tiny basement flat in the Hlídar area and used to play outside all day long. We’d hang about in the streets or kick a ball around in the park at Klambratún or go onto Öskjuhlíd. The hill was a brilliant playground for us kids. You know... the wartime bunkers left over from the British occupation, the quarry and the woods. It was... And the hot-water tanks at the top of the hill... it was like this magical world.’

‘I remember the tanks well,’ Konrád said. ‘They used to be white. Bit of an eyesore towards the end. Always were, I suppose.’

‘Yes. They were torn down not long afterwards to make way for the new tanks with Perlan on top.’

She spoke very quietly and seemed keen to make a good impression, though she couldn’t hide her craving for the vodka. Konrád guessed she was around forty, but she could have been older. The fingers clasping her cup were bony; the nails rough, with black dirt underneath.

‘He was only nine,’ she said again.

‘What was it he saw?’

‘He had no idea it might be important. Not at the time. He didn’t know anything about the case — about Sigurvin and the police investigation. He didn’t know about any of that. He was only a kid. It wasn’t until much later that he heard about it and realised that what he’d seen might have had something to do with it. He started reading up on the background, to find out more about the case. By then he was nearly thirty and it was years since that night by the tanks — so long that he thought maybe he’d dreamt or imagined it.’

‘What does your brother do — for a living, I mean?’

‘He used to work on building sites. As a labourer. But he wasn’t always in work. He’s... he used to drink a bit. But Villi was a nice guy.’

Herdís grimaced as if pushing away an unpleasant thought.

‘Are you younger than him?’ Konrád asked.

‘Yes, by two years.’

She began to tell him about herself and her brother, still in that low, faltering voice. About the basement flat in the Hlídar area on the slopes of Öskjuhlíd, where they had lived with their mother, who worked in a shop and found it hard to make ends meet. Their parents had split up and they rarely saw their father, who had moved to another part of the country. There were only the two of them; they didn’t have any siblings. Neither got on well at school and both left as soon as they could. While still very young, Herdís had shacked up with a man in a rented flat on Hverfisgata, while her brother had gone to sea. He hadn’t taken to the fisherman’s life, though, so he’d got a job on land instead. He’d lived alone and partied hard.

Her brother couldn’t remember exactly when he’d first heard about Sigurvin’s disappearance but his interest had been sparked by an Icelandic true-crime documentary on TV, which had made a big deal about the fact that the victim’s car, a red jeep, had been found up by the tanks on Öskjuhlíd. Scenes from the story were dramatised and a red jeep was superimposed on photos of the hot-water tanks as they used to be, back before the new ones were built and topped by the futuristic glass dome known as Perlan.

‘It triggered a memory,’ Herdís said. ‘About things he’d never connected before. This was about twenty years later.’

‘That’s quite a long time,’ Konrád said. ‘For a witness statement.’

‘He was so desperate to talk about it that he told me and loads of other people too. But, all the same, he found the idea of getting mixed up in an old criminal case a bit embarrassing — stupid, you know. He couldn’t be sure he was right either. I encouraged him to tell the police anyway, so he went and talked to one of your lot, but the man thought it was all too vague to take seriously. Apparently they’d had hundreds of tip-offs that hadn’t led to anything. Villi reckoned his would end up in the same pile.’

‘Do you know who he spoke to at the police station?’

‘No, he didn’t say.’

‘What was it he saw?’

Herdís glanced at her empty coffee cup as if trying to decide whether to have another. Konrád watched her wrestle briefly with her conscience before making up her mind and helping herself to more vodka, not bothering with any coffee this time. She knocked it back in one.

‘Sorry to barge in on you like this,’ she said, replacing the cup on the table. ‘I didn’t mean to come round so late... I was... it’s just I had to have a couple of drinks first.’

‘You needed a bit of Dutch courage?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Why didn’t your brother come with you?’

‘I saw the news about Langjökull and felt I had to talk to someone. It made me think about my brother so much. And someone said you were the person who knew most about the case.’

‘Of course there’s no reason why you should be aware of it, but I’ve left the police,’ Konrád told her. ‘I’ve retired. I could point you and your brother to the people who are dealing with the case today. They’d be pleased to hear from you.’

‘You never found the person who did it.’

‘We thought we knew who it was,’ Konrád said. ‘But he always denied it.’

‘That Hjaltalín?’

‘Your brother’s not with you?’

‘No.’

‘They’ll probably want to talk to him again,’ Konrád said. ‘The police, I mean. I could go with him this time.’

‘Yes,’ Herdís said slowly. ‘Except it’s too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘You can’t go anywhere with him.’

‘Why not?’

‘Villi’s dead,’ she said. ‘He died in a car accident.’

Konrád could sense her distress.

‘He was only thirty-four. He... he would have been forty this year.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Konrád said. It sounded inadequate. He groped around for some way of offering more sympathy. ‘Terrible things, car accidents.’

‘It all came back to me when the body turned up on the glacier,’ Herdís said. ‘Villi’s story about the man he saw by the tanks on Öskjuhlíd — the man who threatened to kill him.’