The Darkness Knows

23

Linda stood up. She put her empty glass down on a small sideboard and went into the kitchen, returning with a tissue to dry her eyes. When she sat down in her chair again, she had recovered her composure a little.

‘I thought the police would never find out,’ she said at last. ‘I should be grateful. It’s been torturing me all these years.’

‘Hjaltalín told us so many lies,’ Konrád said. ‘There was no way of knowing when he was telling the truth. We did everything we could to discover your identity, but he clammed up and refused to say another word. We never found any trace of a married woman in his life. I don’t think it ever occurred to anyone: Sigurvin’s wife.’

‘I could hardly believe it when he used me as his alibi, after all he’d said about how vital it was that no one should get wind of our relationship.’

‘He was desperate. By the way, you took a risk when you paid him that visit in hospital.’

‘I know.’

‘But you thought it was worth it, in spite of that?’

‘We cut all contact after Sigurvin went missing, and never met or talked to each other again,’ Linda said. ‘We just behaved as if our affair had never happened. It was very hard at times. I never dared to get in touch with him, though I longed to. The danger of discovery was too great. And the years went by... But seeing him in hospital, seeing him lying in bed, looking so frail... it was a terrible shock. I hardly recognised him.’

‘Apparently he went downhill very suddenly.’

‘Yes. He just seemed completely done for.’

‘Why did he get in touch?’

‘To say goodbye, I suppose.’

‘What did you two talk about?’

‘Very little,’ Linda said. ‘When the time came, we had so little to say. But it was good to see him and sit with him for a while and...’ Her words died away.

‘Had you been seeing each other long before Sigurvin vanished?’

‘Several months.’

‘Was that why you and Sigurvin split up? Because you’d got involved with Hjaltalín?’

Linda nodded. ‘Partly.’

‘He didn’t know the reason?’

‘No,’ Linda said. ‘He didn’t know about Hjaltalín, but our marriage just wasn’t working. I think we’d have separated anyway.’

‘Was that why you started seeing Hjaltalín? Because your marriage wasn’t working?’

‘You could say that.’

‘Where did you two meet up?’

‘Here and there. At his place. At my place. We kept it very quiet. We used to find small guesthouses outside Reykjavík. In Borgarnes. Selfoss. No one took any notice of us and we kept ourselves to ourselves. Sigurvin was often abroad, which made things easier.’

‘But why? Why did you cheat on him?’

‘How can I explain?’ Linda said. ‘Sigurvin and I were all washed up. And Hjaltalín understood me. He used to comfort me. Cuddle me. Show me affection.’

Konrád waited in silence for her to go on, and soon she was telling him how she had first got to know Sigurvin at the Commercial College. She’d told Konrád some of it during the original inquiry, but now she had the benefit of maturity and bitter experience. Sigurvin had been a real go-getter, she said, and she’d been attracted by his self-confidence. It hadn’t hurt that he was good-looking too, and always seemed to have plenty of cash. They hadn’t even been twenty when they got together, and he had all these plans for how he was going to get rich. He had no intention of continuing in education, and told her she needn’t study pharmacology unless she wanted to. But she was more academic than him and had always wanted to go to university, to be independent.

She hadn’t paid Hjaltalín much attention at college until he and Sigurvin started plotting various business ventures together. They had a lot in common. Both were keen to make money and felt out of place at school. Hjaltalín never finished his course. Then Sigurvin persuaded him to go shares in the fishing venture as almost equal partners. Sigurvin owned the controlling share in the company, but only by a small margin, and as time went on he wanted more. The three of them used to spend a lot of time together in those days. Although Hjaltalín had plenty of girls, he’d always fancied Linda. She’d known instinctively, and one evening he came right out and told her.

‘That’s how it started,’ Linda said, ‘some time before he and Sigurvin fell out. I don’t really know what made me take that step. I suppose my relationship with Sigurvin wasn’t great. And Hjaltalín knew what he wanted and how to get it.’

‘Was he trying to avoid Sigurvin? Was that why he agreed to sell his share when Sigurvin wanted to buy him out? Because of your affair?’

‘I suppose so. That must have played a part.’

‘He reckoned he hadn’t been paid a fair price,’ Konrád said. ‘He believed Sigurvin had shafted him.’

‘Hjaltalín was incredibly angry,’ Linda agreed. ‘He had a temper on him but his moods didn’t usually last long. He was spitting mad about that, though. Still, the fact we were cheating on Sigurvin helped to calm him down a bit, because he felt guilty about it. We both did. We weren’t bad people, you know.’

‘Did Sigurvin ever find out about your affair?’

‘No. Not as far as I’m aware.’

‘You knew Hjaltalín was seeing Salóme?’

‘Their relationship wasn’t going anywhere,’ Linda said. ‘He was planning to break up with her, but then Sigurvin went missing and you know the rest.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us about your relationship?’ Konrád asked. ‘Wouldn’t that have been easiest?’

‘Hjaltalín said that, if we did that, the police would be sure he was involved in Sigurvin’s disappearance. He was convinced of that. He got off because no one knew about us. I’d have been dragged in too. We’d probably both have been convicted. We’d have sworn we were together when Sigurvin vanished but no one would have believed us. We’d have been given life sentences. That’s how he saw it. He was very panicky by then and said people kept telling lies about him and that the police were almost certainly behind it. Like that witness — the one who supposedly heard him threatening to kill Sigurvin. He said it was a total fabrication and he was sure the police had made it up. That’s what he said. He didn’t trust anyone and he warned me that they’d be completely ruthless about using our affair against us.’

‘He certainly didn’t trust anyone,’ Konrád said, thinking about Steinar and Leó and wondering if he should tell her what the old man had claimed. But he decided to leave it for the moment.

‘He didn’t dare tell the police about our affair. He knew it would only be used against him, and that more lies would be told about him. He was absolutely paranoid by then, seeing conspiracies on every side.’

‘So he wasn’t just protecting the married woman; he was trying to save his own skin as well?’

Linda nodded.

‘I reckon Hjaltalín was right, you know,’ Konrád said. ‘Right to keep quiet about you two, however much grief it caused him. He got away with it. News of your affair could have been decisive in swinging the case against him.’

‘That’s what he always believed.’

‘He endured all that time in custody without changing his statement. You must have been proud of him. It’s no joke being locked up in solitary like that.’

‘Proud? I wasn’t proud. I felt terrible knowing that he was in prison and I couldn’t do anything about it. Absolutely terrible. But what was I supposed to do? It had been his idea. I was frightened. Should I have run to you and told you everything? What would have happened then? Would we have been convicted? What would have happened to my daughter? Who was supposed to look after her? We hadn’t done anything. Hjaltalín was with me that evening. I’m not lying, I don’t have any reason to. He was with me.’

‘Do you know what they were quarrelling about in the car park?’

‘Money. Hjaltalín wasn’t happy about the way things had gone, but he’d never have killed anyone for cash.’

‘Did anyone else know about your affair?’

‘No. No one. We were incredibly careful.’

‘So you’re the only person with this new version of what happened.’

‘Yes.’

‘You both lied,’ Konrád said. ‘To Sigurvin. To the police. You withheld important information from us. You say it was to prevent suspicion falling on the two of you. Other people might take a less charitable view and say that it was because you were responsible for killing your husband.’

Linda stared at Konrád incredulously. ‘We didn’t do it.’

‘We only have your word for that.’

‘Now you can see why Hjaltalín didn’t want to tell you,’ she said, raising her voice for the first time. ‘However much trouble he was in. It was exactly because of this. Because the police would have immediately suspected us and started inventing lies about something we never did.’ She glared at Konrád. ‘We... we cheated on him — we had that on our consciences. We cheated on him and it was awful, but that was all. We didn’t do anything else.’