The Darkness Knows

33

The next day Konrád rang the childhood friend of Villi, mentioned by Herdís, who had remembered seeing a big off-roader up by the tanks on Öskjuhlíd as a boy. The man proved eager to cooperate and they arranged to meet at a little place on Ármúli where he said he often went for coffee during the day.

His name was Ingvar and he turned out to be a scrawny figure, with several days’ worth of stubble and a baseball cap covering a large bald patch, which Konrád noticed when Ingvar removed it to scratch his head. He worked as a lorry driver and clearly loved to talk. He went on at length about what it was like growing up in the Hlídar area and playing on Öskjuhlíd and being a Valur fan, as well as a lot of other random stuff that occurred to him. They were sitting at a small round table, sipping their coffees. The place was cosy and quiet, as the afternoon rush hadn’t yet started.

Ingvar turned out to have an extraordinary memory for trivia relating to the Valur sports club. He knew the name of every single player in the handball and football teams, going back many years. He knew all the match results since 1970, and could tell Konrád what Valur’s league position had been on any given date. He knew the players’ birthdays, which teams they had played for before Valur and where they had transferred to afterwards. He not only remembered all the major games but had attended most of them too, and he knew details about the minor games that even the players themselves wouldn’t be able to recall. Indeed, he boasted to Konrád that he had often caught out old Valur players with questions they couldn’t answer. And that wasn’t all: he knew the family relationships of the main players to other sportsmen and sportswomen, right back into the twentieth century. As a big football fan himself, Konrád enjoyed asking him questions that no sane man should have been able to answer, and never failed to get a reply. Ingvar was almost as well informed about Manchester United as he was about Valur, and his specialist subject was historical match results in the English football league and the FA Cup.

This all came to light because Konrád asked when he had seen the big off-roader, and Ingvar replied that it must have been exactly a week before Villi was chased off Öskjuhlíd, because that evening he had been at a junior-league game between Valur and FH at Hlídarendi, and had seen Valur wipe the floor with the Hafnarfjördur team. He had attended the match with two friends whose names he was able to provide. He could remember the final score and who had scored the most goals, and added that it had been the eighteenth birthday of one of the Valur players.

‘So you can pinpoint the exact day?’ Konrád said, marvelling at the man’s phenomenal sporting memory.

‘Yup,’ Ingvar confirmed proudly.

The three friends had been delighted with their team’s victory and had been reliving the highlights of the game as they walked up the hill afterwards, revelling in the power of the scorers and resourcefulness of the wingmen. Ingvar had nicked some cigarettes from his dad and they were planning to smoke them up by the tanks.

‘We thought it was cool,’ Ingvar said of the off-roader. ‘You should have heard the throbbing of the engine as it drove away. We didn’t actually give it much thought, though. I just remembered it when I was talking to Herdís and we were discussing the body on the glacier and what sort of vehicle you’d need to get up there. Villi had mentioned it to me before he died. He remembered the details of the match that had been played at the sports hall that evening, and when I looked it up, I saw that it had taken place the same evening as Sigurvin was supposed to have vanished. It seemed like a pretty amazing coincidence to us. Of course, it was a long time ago, but I’m pretty confident of the timing.’

‘Do you know the make of the vehicle you saw?’

‘I’m afraid I didn’t notice.’

‘Could it have been a Ford Explorer?’ Konrád asked, thinking about Hjaltalín’s car.

‘More like a Wrangler. I don’t know. I reckon I’m quite good at car models, especially trucks, of course, but I didn’t notice that one.’

‘Was the off-roader the only vehicle parked there? Was the owner waiting for someone? What colour was it?’

‘It was up by the tanks when we got there. Grey, I think. We didn’t see inside, so I don’t know if the driver was alone, and we had no idea what he was doing there.’

‘Do you remember anything special about the vehicle?’

‘Just the tyres, really. That’s why it stuck in my mind. They seemed so huge. We weren’t used to seeing specially equipped super jeeps like that in those days. Now they all seem to be elevated on big tyres, with a ton of extra equipment.’ Ingvar scratched his head.

Assuming his memory for other details was as infallible as it was for the fortunes of Valur, Konrád thought it should be possible to rely on his testimony. ‘Do you think it was the same jeep that Villi saw up there a week later,’ he asked, ‘when he had his encounter with the guy who threatened him?’

‘He reckoned it could have been,’ Ingvar said. ‘But he wasn’t sure. He didn’t remember the massive tyres. So it’s possible it wasn’t the same one.’

As they carried on discussing the vehicle and its tyres, Konrád discovered that Ingvar had an unusually clear memory of that evening. This wasn’t just because of Valur’s victory over FH or the team member’s birthday, but because his father had spotted the missing cigarettes and given Ingvar a good hiding. It was one of only two beatings he had ever received.

‘I came home stinking of smoke,’ he said ruefully, ‘and it didn’t take the old man long to put two and two together. He always knew how much he’d smoked, and had banned me from ever starting myself. He was a very careful man, my dad. Spent two years in the premier league. In football. Scored three goals too. All against Akranes.’