Season of the Witch (13 page)

“Yes, I can certainly confirm that.”

“So would it also be unwise to deduce,” asks the
Morning News
reporter, “that the body is that of high school student Skarphédinn Valgardsson?”

“Yes, that would be an unwise deduction,” the chief replies, “at this point in time.”

“But he hasn’t been found?”

“No, he hasn’t been found.”

“So the search party that found the body was presumably looking for Skarphédinn?” asks the
Free Times.

“Yes. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the body is that of the missing man.”

“Has anyone else gone missing in the Akureyri area in the last few hours or days?” I ask.

“No,” replies the chief. “No such notification has been received by the police.”

The little group of reporters is growing restless.

“That’s all I have for you at this point in time,” says Ólafur Gísli. “Thank you.”

“When can we expect more news?” asks the radio reporter, now off-air.

“When new information becomes available,” the chief brusquely retorts. “The investigation is ongoing. We’ll be working as quickly as possible. Thank you.”

The chief is preparing to duck under the yellow tape again when he is accosted by reporters from state TV and
Vision 2
, who only arrived halfway through his statement. They want to film an interview, to which he reluctantly agrees. I wait around to eavesdrop on his interview. He adds nothing to what he said before.

The other reporters, including Heida, have all left by the time Jóa and I meet up back at the car.

“So what shall we do now?” she asks.

“Not a lot we can do. There’s no paper till Tuesday. Let me drop you off somewhere. Have some fun.”

She smiles at me, and her eyes go a little dreamy.

I hardly need to explain what Jóa’s idea of fun is, in the present circumstances. As for me, I can’t think of anything better to do than go to the offices of the
Afternoon News
. Ásbjörn is sitting at his computer. He jumps when I knock at the door and hurriedly closes the website he’s looking at, but not before I notice spectacular images of sexual encounters, with gigantic cocks, voluptuous bosoms, and spread thighs. I pretend not to see. “So how’re things?”

“Fine,” he says, trying to appear cool in spite of his flushed cheeks.

“Where are Karó and Pal?”

“They’re having a nap.”

“I met your buddy, Chief Ólafur Gísli.”

“Did you indeed? How did you get along with him?” he asks, sketching an ironic smirk on his red face.

“He started off by trying to throw me into confusion. And it worked. After that, I think we got along pretty well.”

“Good.”

“Yes, it is. Very good. And it’s really invaluable to have the chief of police as a contact. Especially now, with this missing person case and the discovery of the body.”

“It’s a pity we aren’t going to press again for another two days,” observes the former news editor, wringing his hands. “Such a stroke of bad luck.”

“Ásbjörn, I want to thank you for putting in a good word for me with Ólafur Gísli.”

“It was nothing.”

“You were under no obligation to help me. Do you remember the old movie
Casablanca
?”

Ásbjörn is taken by surprise. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I remember it. Why?”

“There are two characters in
Casablanca
who are at a standoff and distrust each other. At the end of the movie one of them says to the other:
I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Remember?”

“Um, I think maybe it sounds familiar.” His astonished expression is giving way to dawning comprehension. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” I smile. “Or maybe…Perhaps I mean that in a movie it’s important for the characters to be reconciled before
The End
.”

How did
The Odd Couple
end, anyway?

____

I stare out of the window at the wall next door. Then I pick up the phone and punch in the number I’ve been given for theater director Örvar Páll Sigurdarson. He’s a veteran actor, fiftyish, who hasn’t been seen much onstage in Reykjavík in recent years. He got typecast in comedies and farces as he grew older and fatter and lost his hair. When I interviewed him at Hólar, I received the impression of a man who can’t shake off the role of the clown and ends up being a clown himself. Always trying to raise a laugh. Unsuccessfully. His graying beard concealed most of a jowly face and a rather feminine little mouth with pouty lips. But the facial hair didn’t add any appearance of intelligence or dignity, nor did it distract attention from the swollen red nose.

“God has always been hard on the poor,” he quoted. That was about the cleverest remark he made, in answer to my question about why he had come north to direct the play. I suppose he must be better at directing than he is at telling jokes, I thought at the time, and still do. Like everyone else in that kind of interview, he commented, of course, that it was just so exciting working with these enthusiastic youngsters on this brilliant play. And so on.

“This is actor-director Örvar Páll Sigurdarson,” enunciates the voice on the answering machine. “I’m busy achieving new triumphs in life or my art, or possibly both. Please leave a message after the tone, preferably making an offer I can’t refuse. But if you’re Spielberg, Coppola, or von Trier, just leave your name, and I’ll get right back to you!”

Always the joker. I leave my name and phone number. An offer he can easily refuse. But of course he doesn’t.

Within three minutes he’s on the line. I ask if he can meet me to discuss the disappearance of Skarphédinn, and he is happy to do so. He says he’s staying at Hotel KEA, so we agree to meet at the hotel bar in ten minutes.

“I’ll be the tall, elegant gentleman in the gabardine suit,” he says with a forced laugh. “If there are more than one, you’ll recognize me by my diamond rings.”

“It’s quite appalling,” he sputters as he gulps down half his bottle of beer and sets it back on the table with a shaking hand. “Appalling to find myself in this mess.”

“Do you mean…”

“I mean that my contract was supposed to end today.”

“Oh, that’s what you mean.”

He purses his feminine little mouth and takes another drink.

“So have you got lots of work waiting for you down south?”

“No, that’s not what I said,” answers Örvar Páll, draining the rest of the beer. “But it’s appalling to be caught up in all this.”

“It’s worst for Skarphédinn, of course. And his family.”

“Yes, of course. But I gather there’s something a bit weird about the family.”

“Really?”

He shifts forward in his seat, his big belly flopping over the edge of the table. He is wearing a blue turtleneck sweater and faded jeans. “I don’t know much, really, about Skarphédinn’s private life. But I know he didn’t live with his parents. That’s for sure.”

“And what does that tell us?”

“It tells us he didn’t want to live there.”

“Surely that’s quite normal? He’s nearly twenty, after all.”

“He’d been living in a student dorm before that.”

“So you think his relationship with his family was strained in some way?”

Örvar Páll summons a passing waiter.

“I’m just mentioning it. After all, what do I know? Tell you what I do know—Bette Davis said:
If you’ve never been hated by your child, you’ve never been a parent
. Hahaha!”

“Would you like another beer?” I ask as the waiter hovers. In the restaurant is a crowd of people who have come to Akureyri to ski and been disappointed. So they’re getting drunk instead.

“Now that’s an offer I can’t refuse.”

“Do you have children of your own?” I ask as I order myself another Coke.

“Not yet. I’ll have to choose the lucky lady who can demonstrate to me the truth of the maxim that the first half of your life is ruined by your parents and the second half by your children.”

Örvar Páll gazes at me, hoping for a response.

I decide to indulge him and smile. “Did Skarphédinn strike you as an especially independent-minded young man?”

He thinks about it.

“That’s the impression I got, on the one occasion I met him, at Hólar last Saturday,” I add. “Independent. And unusually mature for his age.”

“Yes, I suppose you could put it that way. He certainly had strong views. Sometimes rather too strong for my taste.”

“Was he difficult to direct?”

He fidgets in his seat. The waiter brings the beer and Coke, and he eagerly seizes his drink.

“No, not at all. Not difficult. Determined. As a director, I like to work in a collaborative, collegial environment. I encourage all the members of the cast to make a contribution.”

Maybe because you don’t have much of a contribution to make yourself?
I wonder.

“Did you get at cross-purposes?”

The silly old duffer stares at me as if I’d slapped him in the face. “Did someone say that? Who said so?”

“No, no. No one said it. I’m just asking.”

He takes a drink and says nothing.

“Was he a good actor?”

“He was, as they say, promising. He had experience, of course.”

“He did? What experience?”

Örvar Páll gazes his astonishment. “Oh, didn’t you know? Do you remember
Street Rider
?”

“
Street Rider
…,” I echo, trying to access my memory files.

“It was a teen movie.”

“I don’t remember whether I remember,” I say, echoing Ásbjörn.

“Skarphédinn played the lead role.”

“How long ago was this?” I ask, embarrassed that I don’t remember
Street Rider.

“It must have been about five or six years ago. Skarphédinn was fourteen or fifteen, I think.”

“So he was a child star?”

“Child, or teen star,” corrects Örvar Páll. “When they get pubic hairs, innocence goes out the window.”

“I seem to remember reading that kids who have been child stars can have problems coping with life after their fifteen minutes of fame.”

“Too much, too soon,” he smiles. “Yes, we’ve seen a few cases of that.”

“Do you think that’s what happened to Skarphédinn?”

“Not so far as I know. As you said yourself, he gave the impression of being a determined, mature young man.”

“Actually, what I said was that he gave me the impression of being independent and mature. You’re the one who said
determined
.”

He shrugs.

“So was that the sum of his acting experience? That movie and now
Loftur the Sorcerer
?”

“I believe so. I don’t have a copy of his résumé,” answers the director as he finishes his second bottle of beer. “I first made his acquaintance three weeks ago, along with the other youngsters in the drama group.”

“Were you in
Street Rider
?”

Örvar Páll rolls his empty beer bottle between his palms. “Yes, actually, I did have a small part in the movie. I played a cop, I think.”

Hmmm
, I think. “But you said just now that you didn’t know Skarphédinn before? Not until rehearsals started here in Akureyri?”

He gnaws at his dainty lip. The veneer of joviality has vanished. “If you want to be finicky about it,” he says, “I said I first made his acquaintance three weeks ago. Before that I was on the movie set with him for one day, six years ago.”

I give him a look. As inquisitorial as I can manage. I put on a glary face, like Chief of Police Ólafur Gísli.

“Look,” he protests. “We’ve met. Twice. Would you say you know me?”

“All right,” I admit. “I see what you mean.”

“Just as well,” says Örvar Páll with a guffaw. “Otherwise I’d have called the waiter over and asked for the phone book.”

“What for?”

“To find a cheap lawyer.” Örvar Páll is back in character.

I force a smile, call the waiter over, and ask him to bring, not the phone book, but yet another beer.

“Did you notice anything unusual or odd about Skarphédinn before he disappeared?”

“No, not really,” he answers as he starts on his third beer. “Of course, I didn’t really spend much time with the kids, other than at rehearsals.”

“And the dress rehearsal on Wednesday went well, did it?”

“Just the usual. The odd problem. People dried up. Forgot their stage business. Some lighting that didn’t work. That sort of thing. We went through it all after the rehearsal. Everybody seemed pretty happy with the dress rehearsal, so far as I could tell.”

“Did you go to the party after the rehearsal, back here in town?”

“I just looked in briefly. Had a couple of beers. Then I came back here to the hotel and went to bed. I didn’t approve of the kids having a party just before the first night of the show, of course. But it wasn’t my place to tell them what to do.”

“Where was the party?”

“At Ágústa’s place. She’s chair of the drama group.”

“When was Skarphédinn there?”

Örvar Páll swills down bottle number three. “He arrived just before I left. About ten.”

“And?”

“He seemed to be stone-cold sober. But…”

He falls silent and peers into the bottom of the bottle.

“But what?”

“He was wearing a dress.”

____

The TV evening news and the Easter Sunday edition of the
Morning News
have nothing new to add about the body at the Akureyri junkyard, nor about the disappearance of Skarphédinn Valgardsson.

But they report that a public meeting has been called in Reydargerdi on Easter Monday, with community leaders and members of parliament for the region, to discuss the local “situation and prospects” in the countdown to the general election in May.