The Quiet Mother

21

Konrád scrutinised the photographs, and took his time doing so. The photographer’s son had given him permission to take the envelope that contained both negatives and photos from the scene at the slaughterhouse. He had spread them out on his dining table, fetched a strong lamp and found his magnifying glass, and now hunched over one photo after another, examining them carefully. The photographer had realised that it was a rare and newsworthy incident taking place there in the Shadow District and hadn’t spared film on it.

Konrád tried to arrange the material in some sort of chronological order, starting from the first photos the photographer took when he arrived until the body had been driven away and the number of bystanders and police officers began to dwindle. Many of the first photos were dim and unclear, because the murder scene there at the gate was dark, as Helga had said, despite the photographer using flashbulbs. The cameras in those days were large and unwieldy and the bulb had to be replaced every time the flash was used, and he probably used all the ones he had with him. The later photos showed that the police had set up floodlights at the gate and that their vehicles’ headlights were directed at the place, lighting the area better and consequently making the photos clearer.

In Konrád’s mind, the photos had a strange, exotic feel to them, almost unreal when he considered that their subject was his father. They showed with the eye of the news photographer the brutal murder that had been committed at the slaughterhouse and was as if etched into the bleak environment: the bare stone walls, the imposing iron gate, the cold night. They showed shadowy figures hovering all around. Police officers standing there stiffly in the cold over the body, some in uniform, with white belts around their waists. The blank expressions of the people who had come out of their houses to watch what was going on and were shocked at the violence lying on display there in the street.

Konrád pored over the photos with the magnifying glass, taking a closer look at people’s faces without being able to identify them. He did of course recognise one or two of the policemen, but none better than Pálmi, who was in several of the photos. He was a detective who would go on to lead the investigation of the case and was the one who informed Konrád of the murder. Konrád liked Pálmi. He’d been gentle and sympathetic in his approach when he made it clear to Konrád that his father was dead. Later, they would confront each other during tough interrogations, when the CID’s eyes were focused for a time on the family, the divorce of Konrád’s parents, the relationship between Konrád and his father and their argument the day his father was killed. Pálmi went hard at Konrád and for a time it looked as if the young man would be taken into custody, but that didn’t happen.

Those were difficult days for Konrád. He continued to live alone in the basement in the Shadow District where he’d grown up, and sat there for long stretches of time with his hand on his cheek, staring into the strange void left by the death of his father. He hardly left the house for days and didn’t talk to anyone. His emotions overwhelmed him when least expected and he burst into tears again and again as he sat there alone in the dark; numb, fearful, angry, sad. His mother had urged him to come east, where she lived with a new man and Konrád’s sister Beta, but he couldn’t see himself leaving Reykjavík, the neighbourhood, the basement flat. He couldn’t imagine living in the countryside. Reykjavík was his place. He couldn’t be anywhere else. He was a city kid and didn’t want to be anything else.

He thought constantly of his father and how he’d met his death, and wondered whether he’d finally managed to go so far overboard with someone that it cost him his life. Konrád thought he’d known the man well, but he obviously didn’t know about everything he’d been up to, and he didn’t know all of those he’d associated with or had wronged over the years.

He knew, however, that one of them was a man named Svanbjörn. Konrád had watched his father assault the man over debts that hadn’t been paid in a timely manner, and had had to step in and stop the violence. This Svanbjörn ran two restaurants and bought contraband booze from Konrád’s father, but had a hard time paying what he owed him. A fire broke out in one of the restaurants shortly after their violent meeting. Konrád’s father swore he had nothing to do with the fire. Not long after these incidents, he was stabbed. Svanbjörn produced witnesses who said that he’d been in Ólafsvík when it happened.

Konrád couldn’t resist the temptation and one day, after thinking long and hard about it, he went to Svanbjörn’s restaurant to talk things over with him. Svanbjörn was doing something in the kitchen; he was short, slow in his movements, with dark circles under his eyes and always reminded Konrád of someone who was very ill. Svanbjörn was startled when he saw who had come to see him, and clearly hadn’t been expecting him.

‘What do you want with me?’ he snapped.

‘Was it you?’

‘Was it me? Do you think I did that to your dad? I was in Ólafsvík.’

‘You could have got someone to do it.’

‘I wish I’d done it, but I didn’t. Now scram.’

‘Did you owe him?’

‘Are you here to try to collect? I didn’t owe him a single króna.’

‘Do you know of anyone who did?’

‘Why are you asking me that?’

‘Do you know of anyone?’

‘He owed people, too,’ said Svanbjörn. ‘It wasn’t one-way, if that’s what you think.’

‘Who?’

‘Leave me alone,’ Svanbjörn said wearily. ‘Get out of here and leave me alone. I can’t help you, kid. Your dad was a loser. A fucking bastard and a loser and that’s why this happened to him. You yourself probably know that best of all. If I knew who killed him, I wouldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t tell anyone.’

Konrád felt the anger rise within him. Svanbjörn was undeterred and walked up to him, grabbing a large kitchen knife as he did and letting it dangle at his side.

‘Yeah, you want to come at me like your bastard father? You want to be just like him? Come on! Come on if you dare!’

Svanbjörn shoved him, and for a moment Konrád had to fight the urge to attack him, but then it passed, the tension was released and he retreated from the restaurateur and left the place.

Later, after Konrád was questioned by the police, along with his mother and many of his father’s friends who were no strangers to law enforcement, and numerous leads had been followed without success, the weight of the investigation gradually lifted without it coming any closer to being solved. Around the time that Konrád started working for the police, the case had been more or less buried and filed with other unsolved ones.

Konrád continued to pore over the photographs, one after the other, and was on the verge of giving up and pushing them away when he spotted the window. It could be seen vaguely in several of the photos, but he hadn’t really noticed it until he picked up a photo that showed it from a new angle. He held the magnifying glass up to the photo and compared it to other photos that showed the window, and as far as he could tell, it was tightly shut. The window was just over a metre above the street, and if Konrád remembered correctly, it was in that part of the slaughterhouse that housed the smoking kilns and the firewood used to fuel them.

Konrád knew that when Helga came upon his father lying in the street, only a short time had passed since he was stabbed. Yet she saw no one around. The assailant had disappeared as if the earth had swallowed him. Konrád had never seen this window mentioned in the police reports, or the possibility that the killer had hid by the smoking kilns, and he wondered if he could have slipped in there, gone through the Butchers’ Association buildings and out onto Lindargata Street on the slope above.