The Darkness Knows

36

About ten days after his father was found murdered on Skúlagata, Konrád was called in for questioning. The detective who interviewed him was called Pálmi. He was leading the inquiry and had been the first member of CID to come round to Konrád’s house on that fateful evening. He had been calmly professional and treated Konrád with respect and consideration, unlike the two uniformed officers who had broken the news of his father’s murder to him with such unnecessary bluntness that they’d provoked Konrád into attacking them. It hadn’t helped that he’d been out drinking with his mates and arrived home considerably the worse for wear, to find the cops waiting for him outside the basement flat. The officers in question had both had run-ins with his father and hadn’t appeared sorry in the least that he’d been fatally stabbed.

Nearly two weeks later, Konrád was summoned to the police headquarters on Pósthússtræti, where the duty officer told him to wait in reception until he was called. After a while, growing increasingly fed up, Konrád asked if he would have to wait much longer. The duty officer told him to be patient.

Before coming there, Konrád had seen his mother off at the central bus station. Several days before the murder she had travelled across the country from Seydisfjördur to stay with her sister in Reykjavík. While there, she had told Konrád that she’d met a good man out east and that it was unlikely she would ever move back to the city. Beta was happy in the village — she’d made friends there — and his mother expressed the hope that he might join them in Seydisfjördur. Konrád had never been over to the East Fjords; never visited his mother. When he was younger, his father had forbidden him, and by the time he was old and tough enough to decide for himself, he had lost interest in going. His mother had made a number of trips to Reykjavík, though, especially in the first years after the divorce, and mother and son had at least met up, if briefly, though his father had sometimes insisted on being present.

As the moment of parting at the bus station became drawn out, Konrád had sensed that his mother was troubled about something. Her return ticket to Seydisfjördur had originally been booked for the day after the murder, and she’d got all the way to Blönduós in the north before the bus was stopped and she was obliged to turn round and retrace the almost three hundred kilometres back to Reykjavík for questioning. Before boarding the bus east again, she told Konrád that the police had checked her alibi for the time of his father’s murder. As it happened, she’d spent the entire evening with her sister and brother-in-law.

‘I expect they asked you the same thing,’ she said warily, once all the other passengers except her had boarded the bus. The driver was waiting patiently behind the wheel. It was as if she’d delayed to the very last second before putting her worries into words, but in the end hadn’t been able to stop herself. Konrád could tell she didn’t find it easy. He’d already told her he’d been out with his mates the evening his father was attacked.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘They did.’

‘And you were with your friends?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that’s really where you were?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Mum...’

‘Sorry, dear, I know — I know you’d never do it. It’s just so... the whole thing’s so awful. It was hard enough having to leave you alone with him all those years, knowing what he was like, but then this has to go and happen. They might even try and pin it on you.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ Konrád had said reassuringly. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘But what do they want with you now? Why do they want to question you?’

‘Search me.’

Konrád snapped out of his thoughts when the duty officer finally called for him. He followed the man into a small room at the back, where he was left to kick his heels for another half an hour before the door opened and Pálmi came in carrying a number of files, and greeted him with an apology for keeping him waiting. He put the files on the table and started leafing through them.

‘How are you doing?’ Pálmi asked, while he was searching for the right report.

‘Were you checking up on my mum?’ Konrád asked.

The detective raised his eyebrows as if surprised.

‘Are you lot crazy?’ Konrád added.

‘It was simply part of our routine enquiries,’ Pálmi said. ‘Just because we talk to people and ask them questions, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re under suspicion. You do realise that?’

‘You should leave her alone,’ Konrád said.

‘Thanks for the advice.’ Pálmi extracted the correct papers and laid them in front of him. ‘According to your mother, you two met up in town the day your father was attacked.’

‘That’s right.’

‘What did you talk about?’

‘Nothing special.’

‘Did you discuss your father?’

‘No. She wasn’t interested in hearing about him.’

‘We understand you were involved in various criminal activities with your father, though you don’t have a police record. Is that right?’

‘Who told you that?’

‘We’ve spoken to a number of people and it’s come up more than once. Are you saying you didn’t buy alcohol and cigarettes for him from the Keflavík airbase?’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘You didn’t do pick-ups or negotiate a price for him on contraband from the cargo ships here in Reykjavík harbour?’

‘No.’

‘And you didn’t deliver smuggled alcohol to individuals and restaurants in Reykjavík and the surrounding area?’

‘Who’ve you been talking to?’ Konrád demanded.

‘Like I said, we’ve been gathering information here and there, so don’t you worry about that,’ Pálmi said. ‘Are you also denying that you were with your father when he threatened a man called Svanbjörn, then beat him up?’

‘Svanbjörn cheated him and swindled a load of money out of him. Are you seriously going to listen to a word he says? He’s lucky I was there or Dad would have finished him off. Was it him who stabbed my dad? Have you asked him?’

‘Why should it have been him? Because they had a fight?’

‘Maybe he thought it was my dad who set fire to his place.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Just, you know. He did have a fire, didn’t he?’

‘Did Svanbjörn have any reason to believe your father was responsible?’

‘Haven’t a clue. Maybe.’

‘What do you yourself know about the matter?’

‘I’m sure he thought my dad set fire to his place,’ Konrád said. He remembered his father coming home one evening, jubilant at having called in Svanbjörn’s debt. That same evening, one of Svanbjörn’s two restaurants had been set alight. His father wouldn’t admit to being responsible but Konrád reckoned he knew the truth. He reckoned the debt had been collected by force.

‘Why should he have thought that?’

‘Just, you know... Have you tried asking him?’

‘We’ll do that,’ Pálmi said, making a note. ‘What about you yourself? What were you doing on the day of your father’s murder?’

‘Me?’ Konrád said. ‘Nothing much.’

The police had asked him this repeatedly, but that was all the answer they had got for their pains.

‘We’ve talked to your friends who were with you that evening, and their statements tally with yours in most details. However, the fact remains that you could have slipped away for a while without them noticing. You could also have asked them to cover up for you. They’re not the most reliable witnesses we’ve talked to, and one of them has a police record.’

‘This is such a load of crap,’ Konrád said.

‘What did you and your father quarrel about?’ Pálmi asked.

‘How do you mean?’

‘What did you quarrel about earlier in the day he was found by the abattoir?’

‘We didn’t quarrel.’

Pálmi turned over some papers. ‘We’ve been knocking on doors in your street, as you may have noticed, and two of your neighbours claim they heard a loud altercation coming from your basement flat a few hours before your father was found murdered.’

‘They’re mistaken,’ Konrád said.

‘Are you sure about that?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you were both at home at the time in question. You told us so yourself. It was the last time you saw your father.’

‘Yes.’

‘And everything was fine between you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then who was having the row in your flat?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did you and your dad often fall out?’

‘No.’

‘So your relationship was always good?’

‘Yes, mostly.’

‘Did you get fed up with running errands for him?’

‘I... I never ran errands for him — as you call it.’

So the interview went on for two hours. Konrád stuck to his story and denied having fought with his father or taken part in any illegal activities with him. Pálmi couldn’t get him to change his statement and didn’t feel he had enough evidence to take the matter any further. Konrád’s alibi had stood up to scrutiny. According to his mates, he hadn’t left their sides all evening, and there was no evidence that they were lying to cover up for him.

‘You’re not really a bad person,’ Pálmi said, as the interview drew to a close. ‘You’ve had to cope in very unusual and trying circumstances. It must have been hard for you, growing up with a man like that—’

‘Are we done here?’ Konrád interrupted, getting up to go.

‘I don’t think it’s done you any good,’ Pálmi continued, ignoring the interruption. ‘I’ve known boys in similar situations and they haven’t been happy. I don’t think anyone benefits from an environment like that, and I think you’re going to have a tough time rising above it.’

Konrád stalked out of the interview room, through reception and into the street, then hurried home to the Shadow District. The detective had succeeded in finding his vulnerable spot. The fact was that the neighbours had sometimes heard him shouting at his father. Like, for example, when they’d had that row about Svanbjörn, after Konrád had told his dad he couldn’t just attack a man like him, couldn’t just beat the crap out of him and set fire to his restaurant. His father had reacted angrily and, before Konrád knew it, they were yelling their heads off at each other and his father was calling him a pathetic cripple and saying so what if he used to slap his mother around, she’d asked for it.

Konrád had been lying to the police when he said he hadn’t been talking to his mother about his father when they met up in town that day. He had been lying when he said he and his dad hadn’t quarrelled when he got home.

In the end, he had stormed out of the door, beside himself with rage and wishing his father was dead.