The Quiet Mother

32

The man was around Konrád’s age and had lived in Reykjavík the past three decades. Pálmi had dug up information about him and knew where he lived, and Konrád decided to pay him a visit straight away. The man had worked in fish processing in various villages on the Reykjanes peninsula, as a labourer for Icelandic contractors hired by the US military at the Base in Keflavík, and had driven a taxi in the city. He’d been married for a time and had two children, but divorced many years ago and now lived alone in a basement flat in the Vogar neighbourhood.

He didn’t have a registered phone number and wasn’t at home when Konrád went to see him. So Konrád got back into his car and decided to wait and see if the man would show up. He’d brought a Thermos of coffee and a newspaper and tried to make himself comfortable in his car. He’d reached the obituaries when he noticed a man walk up to the house, take out a key chain, and go down three steps to the basement door. The man appeared to be the right age.

Konrád put down his coffee and newspaper, got out and walked towards the house. He saw that he hadn’t closed the door behind him — which explained itself when he appeared holding a rubbish bag and took it to a bin in the back garden. He eyed Konrád but didn’t greet him, and was heading back inside when Konrád decided to stop him.

‘Ísleifur?’

The man turned and stared at Konrád.

‘Yeah, that’s me.’

When Pálmi called with the information, he said he’d dug up two rape cases that were more memorable to him than others from the past. He’d found out that the rapist in one of them had died quite a few years ago, a violent man who’d broken into the home of a woman in Grindavík, forced himself on her and nearly killed her, and been convicted for it. The other was a man named Ísleifur. Pálmi said he vaguely remembered Ísleifur as a young man, but he hadn’t run into him since the early sixties, when a young woman accused him of raping her after a dance in Keflavík. It had happened in a popular nightclub after closing, when everyone had left. The woman worked at the place and had stayed behind to tidy and lock up following the night’s entertainment. Ísleifur didn’t deny having been there at the time, and said that he was there at the woman’s invitation. They hadn’t known each other previously, but had spoken earlier that evening and had got along quite well. She’d asked him to stay, saying that when she was done locking up, they could have some fun. And that’s exactly what they did. They had sex on one of the couches there at the club before he headed home, not suspecting that he’d committed any crime, as he said.

The woman had a different story to tell. She’d interacted twice with Ísleifur earlier that evening, on his initiative, without knowing anything about him. The first time, he’d asked what time she finished work and what she was planning to do afterwards. She’d told him that she was going home and to bed. He’d been drinking, but wasn’t particularly drunk. About an hour later, she ran into him again and they talked, and, as before, he asked her what time she finished, and she said she was going home after closing up the place, that she was dead tired after her shift and had no interest in anything but going home to bed.

When she was the only one left in the place, the band having packed their gear and gone and the barmen and other employees having left, and she was hurrying to finish everything up, she suddenly saw Ísleifur come out of the men’s loo. She was startled, not expecting anyone else to be there. She asked what he was doing there and he said he fell asleep on the toilet. Her guard went up immediately and she asked him politely to leave; the place was already closed. He asked if there was any hurry, and if they shouldn’t have a drink together.

She refused and when he made no move to go, she was torn between whether she should hurry out of there herself or find a phone and call the police.

She was terribly frightened and was about to run when he grabbed her, and now he was holding a knife.

Konrád regarded the man. Ísleifur looked as if he’d once been strongly built, as the woman had described him, even though he could hardly force himself on anyone any longer; his back was bent and he was slender, but there was a depraved look beneath his ragged eyebrows. Pálmi had mentioned the thin David Niven moustache that he still wore, as he had during the years when he tried to catch the eyes of women. Konrád looked at the thin moustache and got the feeling he still thought he was a pretty good catch.

‘What do you want?’ he snapped.

The woman’s testimony was consistent from the first. She’d done as the man ordered after he threatened to slice her open and various things even worse. She was paralysed with fear and didn’t resist. Although he’d threatened to find her and kill her if she pressed charges, she immediately called the police, who went and arrested Ísleifur and questioned him. A medical examination revealed that the woman had suffered injuries. However, she showed no signs of resisting the attack. Ísleifur had no criminal record. His testimony was deemed credible. It was a case of ‘he said, she said’. Ísleifur was acquitted.

‘I wondered if I could trouble you for a moment about something from the old days,’ Konrád said. ‘It shouldn’t take long.’

Ísleifur stared piercingly at him.

‘What... what are you talking about?’ he asked.

‘It concerns Glaumbær,’ said Konrád.

‘Glaumbær?’ said the man, both ill-humoured and surprised. ‘What’s that?’

‘What’s that? You remember Glaumbær,’ said Konrád. ‘The nightclub.’

‘And who are you?’

‘I used to work for the police. My name’s Konrád. Am I correct in saying that you used to hang out at Glaumbær in the old days?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ said Ísleifur. ‘What do you want from me?’

‘I’d like to know if you did again what you once did to a woman in Keflavík.’

The man stared blankly at Konrád.

‘If you had a knife on you at Glaumbær just before Christmas in 1971, around the time the place burned down,’ Konrád continued. ‘If you attacked a woman I knew. Attacked and raped her. As you did when you were in Keflavík.’

The man straightened up. This unexpected visit was becoming a bit more understandable to him. The connections were becoming clearer.

‘I haven’t heard about Keflavík for a long time,’ he said after some thought, running a finger through his moustache. ‘It was nothing but damned lies on that woman’s part.’

‘Why would she have told such lies about you?’ Konrád asked. ‘She didn’t know you at all. Didn’t know who you were. She could hardly have got anything out of it.’

‘Everything those broads say is a lie. Fucking lying cunts.’

‘And Glaumbær?’ said Konrád. ‘Nothing happened there, either?’

The man hesitated.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Her name was Valborg. The woman at Glaumbær. She was attacked the other day, and her life snuffed out. I’m sure you must have seen the news reports. Do you know anything about it?’

‘No, I don’t,’ said Ísleifur. ‘I’m going to ask you to get out of here. I’ve done nothing wrong. The woman in Keflavík lied about me and I don’t understand any of this bullshit of yours about Glaumbær. Not a thing.’

The man headed back down the stairs to the basement.

‘Did you use the knife there, too?’

Ísleifur didn’t answer.

‘You may have a child that you don’t know about,’ said Konrád, to shock him. ‘Now wouldn’t that liven up your existence?’

Ísleifur stopped.

‘Valborg had a baby nine months after Glaumbær burned,’ Konrád said. ‘She never revealed who the father was. Kept it entirely to herself. Could it be you?’

Ísleifur turned towards Konrád and told him to go to hell, spat at him and then stormed down to the basement and slammed the door behind him.