The Darkness Knows

11

The boys spent a lot of time playing on Öskjuhlíd that winter. They had watched the building of the new bowling alley overlooking the Valur stadium, and used the construction site as a fort, skirmishing with swords and shields among the grey concrete walls and steel reinforcement bars. Now that the alley had opened, they hung around inside, watching people bowling, and if anyone had money they would have a go on the arcade games or buy themselves chips with ketchup. When they got tired of that, they would go down to the old quarry or walk out to Nauthólsvík Cove to watch the kayakers or the occasional weirdo swimming in the sea.

That February evening Villi was alone. He looked in at the bowling alley and watched the players for a while but, having no real interest in the sport, he didn’t stick around long. His mum had warned him not to be late because kids his age weren’t allowed out after eight o’clock, and it was already after the curfew when he left the flat. He wandered up the hill, hardly aware of his surroundings, in low spirits because his handball team, Valur, had just lost an important game. The cold didn’t bother him as he was warmly dressed in a thick anorak, woollen hat and gloves. Seeing the hot-water tanks in the moonlight, he headed towards them. He didn’t mind being alone. Although he had good friends and liked nothing better than playing with them, he was also perfectly content with his own company.

The tanks loomed against the sky like the towers of a deserted castle, wide-bellied and obsolete. They were marked down for demolition, to make way for a modern geothermal heating system. The old tanks, eight of them, formed a circle on the crown of the hill, and it was possible to walk between them into a central space, floored with concrete and littered with scrap metal, such as the wreck of a stolen bicycle that was now beyond repair. Each tank had a ladder attached, leading to the roof, but the lowest rung was more than two metres off the ground, which meant another ladder was needed to reach it. The boys had been resourceful enough to acquire one and some of them had climbed right to the top. Villi had once gone all the way up himself but was terribly afraid of heights and wouldn’t ever want to do it again. The tank had a sloping roof and he’d had the horrible sensation that he was constantly sliding down it. Some of the other boys, who didn’t suffer from vertigo, had strutted around on top, walking along the very edge or sitting there with their legs dangling in the air. A few even jumped between the tanks, but he would never in his life dare to do that.

Crude graffiti had been sprayed all over the blank canvas provided by the walls, including a clumsy drawing of a cock, which always made the boys giggle.

Villi walked into the circle formed by the tanks and lay down on his back in the middle, gazing up at the sky. He glimpsed the moon in the gap between the huge, dark shapes and watched as it gradually passed out of sight, while the big revolving light on top of one of the tanks appeared and disappeared in turn. His mum had told him it was a beacon for planes landing at the domestic airport on Vatnsmýri, at the foot of the hill. Its green and yellow beam sliced through the night above the city with a slow, steady rhythm, round and round, like the slightly fast second hand on a clock.

He lay there for a while, then thought he should probably be getting back before his mum grew worried and came out looking for him. She’d had to do that more than once and was always complaining about his absent-mindedness, calling him a real ‘space cadet’, a term he didn’t really understand. He knew his teacher had told his mum that he didn’t pay enough attention in class. His mum tried to help him with his homework and he did his best, but school bored him rigid and he couldn’t see why he had to spend all his time learning stuff he didn’t have the slightest interest in.

He was brooding on this problem when, out of nowhere, there was a sound of footsteps right next to him. He leapt to his feet. A man he’d never seen before, with long hair and a small ring in one ear, was standing in front of him, looking angry.

‘What are you doing, messing about here?’ the man said roughly, as if his anger were directed at Villi, though Villi had never done anything to him.

‘Nothing,’ Villi said.

‘Get lost,’ the man ordered. ‘Piss off!’

‘OK,’ Villi said, careful not to provoke him, though he felt he had every bit as much right to be there as the man did himself.

Then, without warning, the man lunged at him and grabbed his arm.

‘If you tell anyone you saw me, I’ll track you down and kill you, do you hear me?’

Villi didn’t dare say a word.

‘Do you hear me?’

Villi nodded.

‘Now get lost,’ the man said, letting him go.

Villi stumbled away, badly frightened. As he darted out from between the tanks, he spotted the man’s car, a big off-road vehicle, parked in the lee of a small concrete hut that had once housed the control centre for the geothermal heating system. It occurred to him that the man must have arrived before him or he would have heard the engine.

He hurried away, repeatedly snatching glances over his shoulder, terrified that the man would chase him. The last thing he saw before breaking into a run was the headlights of another car as it drove up to the tanks, illuminating them for a moment, before it disappeared from view behind the concrete hut.

Herdís finished her story. Konrád had been forced to lean towards her as she spoke because her voice was so low that it was a strain to catch what she was saying. It didn’t help that his hearing was going and he was too stubborn to do anything about it. After a few moments’ silence, he asked if he could offer her anything else to drink. She shook her head.

‘I shouldn’t have come round so late,’ she repeated.

‘That’s all right,’ Konrád said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

‘I don’t usually do things like this.’

‘I’m sure you don’t.’

‘I’ve been thinking about it so much since that man’s body was found in the ice.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘I felt like I had to do something about it, in memory of Villi. I was his little sister and he was always so good to me. He was one of a kind, was Villi. A wonderful brother. He’d been trying to stay off the booze at the time of his accident. It was the middle of winter, there was a whiteout and the roads were icy, and somehow Villi got hit by a car. The driver never came forward, just made off. And there were no witnesses, so we never found out who it was.’

‘Was that... Vilmar, wasn’t that his name?’ Konrád asked, suddenly realising that he had in fact heard of her brother. He remembered the hit-and-run; remembered a man dying and the search for the driver who’d fled the scene. A highly unusual incident for Reykjavík. It had happened on Lindargata, near the city centre, a place Konrád knew well as he had lived there as a boy.

‘It was terrible for a lovely bloke like him to lose his life like that,’ Herdís said. ‘Absolutely terrible.’

‘And you said he told lots of people his story?’ Konrád asked. ‘When the memory of it came back to him?’

‘Yes, he did. After watching that TV programme, he realised what he’d seen might be important and he started talking about it to anyone who would listen.’

‘Who was the man on Öskjuhlíd?’

‘He never knew. Villi was only nine at the time and the news about the missing man completely passed him by, like I said. It never occurred to him that his experience could have had anything to do with Sigurvin vanishing. But he never forgot the man who scared him that night. Once he started thinking about it, he remembered the handball game earlier that evening. He could remember which team Valur had been playing, so it was easy enough to look up the old match reports. It turned out the game had taken place the evening Sigurvin went missing.’

‘I see.’

‘But I...’ Herdís broke off.

‘What?’

‘Sometimes I find myself thinking maybe Villi’s death wasn’t an accident. I mean, why didn’t the driver help him? Why didn’t he stop?’

‘The weather conditions were very bad,’ Konrád pointed out. ‘You said so yourself. Visibility was poor. It’s possible the driver thought he wasn’t badly hurt, even though he’d been clipped by the car. If I’ve remembered right, that was one theory at the time.’

‘Well, the more I think about it, the clearer it seems to me that he meant to kill Villi.’

‘And you think it’s connected somehow to Sigurvin?’

Herdís nodded. ‘I wanted to ask if you could find the man who ran Villi down,’ she said. ‘Your case has been reopened and I can’t help feeling Villi’s part of it somehow.’

Konrád was still wondering how to answer this when Herdís abruptly rose to her feet.

‘I’ve kept you long enough.’

‘The police may want to talk to you,’ Konrád said, standing up as well.

‘That’s all right, as long as they keep quiet about it. I don’t like the idea of any fuss.’

‘I don’t think you need worry about that. Did your brother tell you anything else about the man?’

‘Only that he had long hair and a small ring or stud in his ear, and that he was very scary and sinister.’

‘Did Villi know who Hjaltalín was?’

‘Yes, later, when he began to make the connection.’

‘Was it him?’

‘No. It was a totally different man.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘He was sure.’

‘What about Sigurvin? Could it have been him?’

‘No, it wasn’t him either,’ Herdís said. ‘Villi was positive it wasn’t either of them who threatened to kill him.’ She stood there in silence for a few moments, her eyes lowered. ‘I just find the whole thing so unbearable,’ she said at last, ‘that I wondered if you could help me. If there might be some way of tracking down that driver and... and finding out what really happened. You know, whether it was an accident or he... deliberately set out to kill Villi.’