The Darkness Knows

2

By the time he finally emerged from the sports bar into the driving snow, he was seriously drunk. He hadn’t seen his friend for at least an hour, so he must have gone home. As usual, they’d met up early to watch the football. It had been a good match and afterwards he’d got talking to some lads he didn’t know, while Ingi had lapsed into a gloomy silence. Ingi often got like that when he drank: just sat there, not saying a word.

He lowered his head, clutching his jacket tightly around his skinny frame, and set off into the blizzard. The snow immediately started settling on his clothes, and in no time at all he was freezing and cursing the fact he hadn’t put on his work overalls, which were thickly lined enough to protect him from anything the elements could throw at him. On winter mornings it could be hard to leave the warm hut for the exposed construction site, but two mugs of coffee, a cigarette and the blue overalls all helped. It wasn’t complicated. Simple pleasures — you just had to know how to appreciate them. Football and a cold beer. Coffee and a ciggie. And thick overalls in winter.

He moved quickly but unsteadily along the pavement, his thoughts as erratic as his footprints in the snow.

He’d thought the guy looked vaguely familiar as they sat chatting at the bar, but it had taken a while for the penny to drop. The lights were low and the guy had been wearing a baseball cap and kept his head down. They’d exchanged a few remarks about the game and discovered that they both supported the same team. In the end, unable to restrain himself, he’d started talking about Öskjuhlíd and asked the man straight out if it had been him he ran into there. Asked if he remembered that evening too.

‘No,’ the man said. But the glance he shot him from under his cap removed all doubt that it was him.

‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ he exclaimed, pleased and incredulous. ‘It was you! Don’t you remember me? I can’t believe it! Did the cops ever talk to you?’

Instead of answering, the man ducked his head even lower.

But he wouldn’t let go of the subject. He told the man how he’d gone to the police about it several years ago but they hadn’t taken any notice of him. The cops had received a million tip-offs and he’d only been a boy when it happened, so maybe it was –

‘Leave me alone,’ the man muttered.

‘What?’

‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ the man said angrily. ‘Just leave me alone!’ Then he got up and stamped out of the bar.

He’d been left sitting there, hardly able to get over the coincidence that it was the same guy. He was still marvelling at the fact when he staggered outside himself a few minutes later and headed for home. By the time he reached Lindargata, the snow was so impenetrable that he could barely make out the next street light as he hurried across the road, thinking that he would have to inform the police as soon as possible. Just as he was about to reach the other side, his befuddled senses registered that he was in danger. His surroundings were lit up by a sudden dazzling glare, and over the noise of the wind he heard the roar of an engine approaching at speed. The next moment he was flying through the air, an agonising pain in his side, then he crashed down head first onto the pavement that had been swept clear of snow by the storm.

The booming of the engine receded and everything grew quiet again, apart from the screaming of the wind. But the blizzard went on raging all around him, the stinging flakes pelting his exposed flesh and penetrating his jacket. He couldn’t move, his whole body was a mass of pain, his head worst of all.

He parted his lips to call for help but couldn’t emit a sound.

Time passed but he was no longer aware of it. He couldn’t feel the pain any more, or the cold. The alcohol had dulled his senses. His thoughts drifted back to the man in the sports bar, then even further back in time to the hot-water tanks on Öskjuhlíd hill, where he’d loved to play, and the incident he’d witnessed there as a boy.

He was absolutely sure. They’d met once before.

It had been the same man.

There was no doubt in his mind.