The Darkness Knows

12

The following day Konrád met up with Marta. He invited her for a Thai meal in the Skeifan retail park, preferring to meet her on neutral ground rather than constantly going into the police station as if he were still working there. While they were eating, he reported what Herdís had told him about her brother — both what Villi had witnessed by the tanks on Öskjuhlíd and how he had died in a hit-and-run. Marta listened in silence.

‘It’s not much to go on,’ she said when he’d finished, trying to put out the fire in her mouth with the help of rice and a sip of water. She was a big fan of spicy oriental food and liked to boast about the fact. As usual, she had ordered one of the hottest dishes on the menu, and her forehead was beaded with perspiration.

‘Well, I think it’s significant,’ Konrád said. ‘The story could be relevant to Sigurvin’s disappearance.’

‘We can’t interview the witness.’

‘No, that’s true.’

‘What sort of people are they?’

‘Just ordinary types,’ Konrád said. ‘Decent people. The sister made a good impression on me. She was clear and knew exactly what she wanted to say. She came forward on behalf of her brother because she still misses him.’

‘She’s not making it up?’

‘I find that extremely unlikely.’

They were trying to keep their voices down, as the restaurant was busy. It was justly popular for the quality of its cooking. Konrád had always had a lot of time for Marta, ever since she’d joined CID as a young woman. She’d been a good colleague because she never got carried away but approached each case with a cool head, taking her time, and as a result she rarely put a foot wrong. Once she had acquainted herself with all the details of a case, she would home in unerringly on the essentials and it took a lot to deflect her from her course.

‘What’s new about it?’ she asked dismissively. ‘We’ve always suspected that someone — i.e. Hjaltalín — picked Sigurvin up in a car by the tanks. A man with long hair? Where does that get us?’

‘I remember at one point we thought Sigurvin might have gone up to Öskjuhlíd to get a breath of fresh air and clear his head. That maybe he’d bumped into one or more individuals who attacked him. If the boy’s story is to be believed, it’s possible that this man was waiting for Sigurvin and took him away in his car. He had what the boy referred to as an off-roader.’

‘The boy didn’t see Sigurvin,’ Marta pointed out.

‘No, and the man he met wasn’t Hjaltalín either.’

Marta went on shovelling down her food.

‘Hjaltalín had a good head of hair,’ Konrád remarked. ‘When we first arrested him, he had a mullet, long at the back and bushy on top.’

‘A mullet? God, that was a terrible fashion.’

‘You’re telling me.’

‘Like so much else in the eighties,’ Marta said.

‘Anyway, Villi was sure it wasn’t him.’

‘Isn’t it more likely he just invented the whole thing? You know how stories grow up around cases like that. There are always all kinds of rumours. And what’s an off-roader to a nine-year-old boy? Aren’t all jeeps off-roaders?’

Marta wiped the sweat off her forehead with her napkin. Her face looked puffy. ‘This isn’t bad,’ she said.

‘Why not just admit that it’s got you beat?’

‘This? This is nothing.’

‘I don’t believe he invented it,’ Konrád said, abandoning the attempt to wind her up, as he knew she’d never admit to being defeated by a curry. ‘When the boy was older, he made the connection between what happened to him and Sigurvin’s disappearance, and reckoned he’d witnessed something important.’

‘OK, I get that, but it’s weak at best. Hjaltalín’s still my man.’

‘You mean you’re not going to do anything about it?’

‘It’s useful to know but...’ She shrugged.

‘We have a new witness,’ Konrád said. ‘That’s got to mean something.’

‘That’s not true, Konrád, and you know it. The witness is dead and may not have been particularly reliable either. He was a kid when it happened. And only remembered it years later.’

Konrád made a face. He had to admit that Marta had a point. He’d asked Herdís if her brother had been able to remember the colour of the vehicle he saw on Öskjuhlíd, but its appearance had been too hazy in his memory; lost in the mists of time.

‘Sometimes I think we must have made some fundamental mistake during the original inquiry,’ he said.

‘Hjaltalín had a Ford Explorer, if I recall correctly,’ Marta said, ignoring his remark. ‘And a second car, a Nissan Sunny.’

Konrád looked at her without speaking. Eventually he replied: ‘If the boy was right, there was another man, not Hjaltalín, up by the tanks the evening Sigurvin vanished. I don’t think we — by which I mean you — can ignore that fact. I think you should at least bear it in mind.’

‘I have to say, I’m pretty sceptical about this, Konrád, but I’ll talk to the woman who visited you. No problem. We’re still receiving all kinds of tip-offs about Sigurvin, believe it or not.’

‘She even thinks, or suspects, that her brother’s death, the hit-and-run, could have had something to do with the case.’

‘OK, OK, I’ll hear what she’s got to say.’

‘Can you actually taste anything?’ Konrád asked.

‘Sure, it’s delicious, though maybe it could be a bit hotter,’ Marta said, wiping away a drop of sweat that was trickling down her nose.

After his lunch with Marta, Konrád took a short drive out to Seltjarnarnes, the westernmost tip of the peninsula on which Reykjavík was built. He parked on the road leading to the golf course and sat in the car for a while, his eyes on the shore ridge in front of him, remembering the last time he had come here with Erna. There was no lunar eclipse now. The heater creaked a little as it pumped hot air into the car. It was bitterly cold outside. Konrád gazed over at the isthmus at Grótta, where the lighthouse had been guiding seafarers safely through the dark for more than half a century.

Marta’s reaction hadn’t been particularly encouraging, but Konrád could understand that. When all was said and done, Villi’s story didn’t add much to their theories, and yet to him there was something fresh and exciting about it, something that stirred up the dust in the lumber room of his mind. Admittedly, Villi had only recalled the incident a long time afterwards but, nevertheless, it meant they had a new witness in the bizarre mystery that Konrád had thought he would never have to wrestle with again.

Hjaltalín had been wrong when he said that Konrád had believed him. The case had been discussed from every possible angle, but they had never managed to find any incriminating evidence against Hjaltalín. In fact, evidence of any kind had been extremely thin on the ground. They had no murder weapon, no body. The search of Hjaltalín’s home and workplace had brought nothing to light. The two men’s quarrel could have been the motive the police were looking for, if Sigurvin had in fact been murdered, but Hjaltalín’s persistent denial, in spite of his long spell in custody, had cast doubt on the value of that theory.

Hjaltalín had appeared to cope extraordinarily well with his detention. Many people were badly affected by being kept in solitary confinement. There were examples of prisoners suffering a complete breakdown in a matter of days, but Hjaltalín’s time in custody had seemed to make no impact on him. He had stuck to his guns throughout, steadfastly insisting that his conscience was clear.

The only thing of interest that had occurred during his detention was his attempt to develop a personal relationship with Konrád and turn him into his confidant, eventually going so far as to refuse to speak to anyone else in the police. Konrád hadn’t liked that at all. He’d felt a strong antipathy for the man, which made him reluctant to meet him more than absolutely necessary. Nor did he approve of giving in to a prisoner’s demands like that.

It was true that over time Konrád had begun to have his doubts about the case they had built up against Hjaltalín, but he had kept his misgivings largely to himself. Once CID began to focus their sights on Hjaltalín, the scope of the investigation had gradually shrunk until it was almost entirely concentrated on him. They had been pretty certain that Sigurvin had been killed the evening of the two men’s quarrel, as nothing had been seen or heard of him since.

Konrád gazed at the lighthouse as if it could guide him onto the right course, as if he were a sailor lost at sea. Then he set the car in motion again and continued on his way, further out along the peninsula, into his last memory of Erna.