The Quiet Mother

25

It was raining; cold, dense and relentless. The man stood in the shelter of a work shed, smoking a Camel. He was white-haired, with stiff white stubble on his face. Small grey eyes peered out from under thick eyebrows into the rain, watching as Konrád made a wide arc around the building foundation and hurried towards him. Yet another hotel was rising from the ground up. It was the end of the working day and most of the crew had left, after building formwork. Tomorrow, concrete would be poured.

They shook hands and introduced themselves, and Konrád knew that he’d met the right man. His name was Flosi and he continued smoking his Camel nonchalantly, as if unsurprised by this visit. Konrád got the feeling that it would take quite a lot to upset him, and didn’t expect that his business with him would, either.

Konrád’s friend Eyþór hadn’t sat idle after their meeting at the art gallery. He’d called people he knew from his Glaumbær years, not only employees he remembered, but also other individuals who’d been among the nightclub’s most regular patrons and whom he knew from that time. There were quite a few of them. He enjoyed looking back on his years at the place, and some of the phone calls lasted quite a while. Some of those he’d known had passed away and others he’d forgotten, but in the end, he had a few names that he thought might be of use to Konrád, and asked him to let him know if his efforts were of any help.

‘Fucking rain,’ said Konrád, glad to be able to take shelter from it. He tried to shake off the water. He’d already talked to two old employees of Glaumbær. They vaguely remembered a woman named Valborg who had worked there, but not well enough for it to be of any use to him.

‘It’s all going underwater here,’ said the man with the stubble, putting the butt of his Camel between his fingers and flicking it towards the foundation, at the bottom of which something of a pond had formed. His voice was hoarse from too many Camels. ‘Are you this friend of Eyþór’s?’ he asked, looking Konrád over. His white hair stuck out in all directions from under a worn baseball cap.

‘He said I could talk to you about Glaumbær. Said that you were a barman there. That you’d been working the night the place burned down.’

‘I didn’t think anyone was interested in Glaumbær any more,’ the man said. ‘I thought everyone had forgotten about it.’

‘It was a fun place,’ Konrád said, trying to imagine the man as many decades younger, serving him Chartreuse Green just before closing. ‘I can’t say I was a regular, but I did go there often.’

The man looked at him.

‘I don’t remember you. Eyþór said you worked with him on the force.’

‘That’s right. Do you remember a girl who worked at Glaumbær named Valborg? I’m sure Eyþór asked you about her.’

‘And are you still a cop, or...?’

‘No, I retired from the police.’

‘But not entirely?’ said the man, still looking out into the rain.

‘Well, I guess you can’t shake it off so easily.’

‘Eyþór mentioned that woman, but I can’t place her,’ said Flosi. ‘I told him that, but he still thought I should talk to you, in case I recalled anything. A whole lot of people worked at Glaumbær when it was at its most popular, and there were bands and girls hanging around them and somehow it’s all jumbled up in my memory. I told Eyþór that. Told him I wouldn’t be of much use to you. I was only there for a couple of years.’

‘I can imagine that Valborg was a very quiet girl who didn’t draw much attention to herself. Did Eyþór tell you what happened to her?’

‘Yeah. And no one knows anything?’

Konrád shook his head and said that the police were doing their best to catch the perpetrator, but had little to go on.

Flosi took out a crinkled pack of Camels and fished a cigarette out of it. He offered Konrád one, but he declined. Konrád hadn’t touched a Camel in decades. He could just as well imagine smoking horse shit.

‘I don’t follow the news,’ said Flosi, lighting the cigarette with an almost empty plastic lighter that he had to tap on his palm to get working. ‘Still, I heard about that break-in and murder. Strange to hear too that it was a girl who worked at Glaumbær in the old days.’

‘Yes, Valborg.’

‘And what, you think it’s connected to the nightclub? Is she a relative of yours? How did you know her?’

‘I only met her very recently, in fact,’ said Konrád. ‘Before she died, she reached out to me and asked me to help her with something, and I feel like I owe her. Eyþór said you’d mentioned people who came to Glaumbær that weren’t of the highest quality, so to speak.’

‘Everyone went to Glaumbær,’ Flosi said, ‘including, of course, a few reprobates. People who’d been in prison or would end up in prison. Scum like that. The kind that went there just to start fights. Mess with another guy’s woman and the like. Guys who were looking for trouble. We kept an eye on them. I’m sure you’ve seen a bit of that type yourself. Stuff like that, you know? The kind of stuff that always exists.’

Flosi had become philosophical in the cold downpour, and his stubble made a raspy sound as he scratched his cheeks.

‘Anyone you remember in particular?’

‘Did something happen to the girl at Glaumbær?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Why are we standing here?’

‘I’m trying to figure out if something might have happened there,’ Konrád admitted. ‘Glaumbær was mentioned. She worked there around the time the place burned. Maybe she met another employee there? Or got into a relationship with someone who came there often?’

‘So you’re looking for a man in her life? At that time?’

‘It’s just something I’m pondering,’ Konrád said. ‘Whether she was in a relationship with someone from Glaumbær.’

‘Too bad I can’t help you,’ said Flosi. ‘I don’t even remember the woman, let alone if she had a guy in her life.’

‘But do you remember anyone who may have made advances at her, and who she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with? Someone who may have pestered her? Someone who didn’t leave her alone? Someone the women complained to you about? Someone they feared? You know how men can be. Especially when they’re out on the town.’

Flosi took a drag from his Camel. Then he looked silently down into the rapidly growing pond that had formed in the foundation.

‘I don’t remember anyone in particular,’ he said after long consideration. ‘Naturally, all sorts of issues came up, but nothing that I didn’t forget about immediately. Arguments and fights and the kind of friction you can find at any nightclub or bar. Someone the women feared?’

Flosi stared out into the rain, trying to recall old stories from when he’d worked at Glaumbær.

‘Yeah, I remember a man who came there quite regularly and had been charged with rape, if that’s anything. My late sister told me about him. I don’t remember how she knew it, but she pointed him out to me once and said he’d raped a girl in some town down on the Reykjanes peninsula, it may have been Keflavík, and that it had gone all the way to court but he’d been acquitted. My sister followed such cases. She was studying law in those years. So I started noticing him. Is that the sort of thing you’re after? Are you fishing for examples like that?’

‘Yes, maybe.’

‘I think he was somehow connected to the Base,’ Flosi continued. ‘The soldiers kept a fairly low profile, for the most part, but they did occasionally come to Reykjavík to cut loose, and that fellow was sometimes with them. People didn’t like the Yanks and I think they sensed it.’

‘Your sister is deceased?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Do you remember anything else about this man? Or anyone like him? Guys who were talked about along these lines?’

‘No. Nothing comes to mind besides this. I only vaguely remember it, to tell you the truth, and probably only because my sister mentioned it. Still, I think...’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s like I recall her having said it happened at a dance.’

‘What?’

‘The rape. At a club. After closing.’