Snowblind (12 page)

‘You’ll have to come with us. We need you to make a statement.’

Tómas spoke in measured tones, struggling to keep any brusqueness out of his voice. Karl stood still as he watched Linda being lifted into the ambulance.

‘Of course. I’m coming.’

‘Can we have the key to your flat? We have to check for any signs of activity there.’

He nodded. ‘It’s not locked. There’s nothing to see. I had a look just now to see if anyone was there.’

‘Sit in the car.’ Ari Thór ushered him to a seat.

The ambulance had gone, its lights lurid against the relentless snow. The garden behind the house on Thormódsgata no longer looked like a crime scene, washed clean by the flurries of snow that had now settled in a gleaming cold blanket. Linda had been taken away, Karl was in the car. Only traces of red could be seen. The garden was being transformed in front of Ari Thór’s eyes; it could be any back yard in a quiet street of a small northern town.

Hlynur arrived a few minutes later.

‘I’m going back to the station with Ari Thór,’ Tómas said, his voice almost lost in the wind. ‘Karl comes with us. I need you to investigate the scene as best you can. We need to locate the weapon. We don’t have any details of her injuries – they were too busy keeping her alive – but my feeling is that it was a knife. Keep your eyes open. Take a look in the flat as well – see if there’s anything that indicates a struggle.’

Ari Thór fought to keep his eyes open as the storm raged. The thick snowflakes no longer fell gently to earth but instead lashed anyone so unwary as to step outside in such weather. He sat next to Karl in the squad car’s back seat. Tómas drove them in silence.

The police station provided a welcome refuge from the force of the blizzard with its safe, familiar environment. It wasn’t until he was inside that Ari Thór realised how hard his heart had been pounding. He could clearly feel himself relaxing and felt the pain in his shoulder return.

They showed Karl into the office that was used as their rarely needed interview room. Ari Thór was finding it difficult to comprehend Karl’s attitude. He seemed strangely placid, considering the circumstances. He asked, ‘Is this going to take long? I’d like to get up to the hospital as soon as I can.’ Little emotion.

‘We’ll do our best to be quick. It helps make things go faster if you speak clearly and distinctly,’ Tómas said, and explained to Karl that he was being treated as a witness.

The tape recorder started. Ari Thór wrote a few words and passed a note to Tómas.

‘Would you give me your jacket?’ Tómas asked.

The question seemed to take Karl by surprise and his eyes widened.

‘Your jacket. Can you take it off? Give it here.’

Karl obeyed, apparently just noticing the little stain that Ari Thór had seen, but saying nothing. He passed his jacket to Tómas.

‘This will have to be sent away for examination.’

Ari Thór nodded and fetched an evidence bag for the jacket.

‘Blood?’ asked Tómas.

Karl didn’t seem upset by the question. ‘Probably.’

Tómas sat in silence and Karl did the same; they were eyeing one another, almost daring the other to speak first. Karl was the winner, as Tómas looked down, shuffled in his seat and began his line of questioning.

‘Do you know how it got on your jacket?’

‘I took it off when I found her, used it to cover her, to keep her
warm. There was blood everywhere. The paramedics put it to one side when they arrived and tried to revive her.’

‘When did you last see Linda?’

‘This morning.’

‘She went to work?’

‘Yes, she had a shift until six.’

‘Do you know if she went home early?’

‘No idea.’

‘Have you heard from her today?’

‘No, not a word. Could I give the hospital a call?’

He sat quietly, as anyone with nothing to hide would. Ari Thór’s instinct was that they were wasting time on the wrong person.

‘I’ll speak to the doctor shortly. Weren’t you at home at six?’

‘No,’ he said and lapsed again into silence.

‘Where were you?’

‘Playing poker with the boys. Every Wednesday. We meet at five, five-thirty, when they’ve all finished work, and we play into the evening. Not too late, though. A couple of beers, a few hands of cards.’

‘They’ll confirm that you were there before six?’

‘Yes,’ Karl said and hesitated. ‘You want their names?’

‘Yes, please.’ Tómas said, handing him a pen and paper.

Karl handed back a list. Tómas looked at the names.

‘I’ll make the calls. I know them,’ he said to Ari Thór.

I know them, and you don’t. Out-of-towner.

Tómas stood up.

‘Can you call the doctor?’ Karl asked.

Tómas nodded and left the room. Ari Thór wasn’t sure if he should continue the investigation or keep quiet. Maybe just chat about something else. The result was an uncomfortable silence.

‘Coffee?’

Karl shook his head. ‘You’re sharp. The jacket and the blood on it. I hadn’t noticed anything.’

Ari Thór wasn’t sure how he should take this and wondered why Karl was complimenting him. Was the man trying to establish a rapport?

Should he be saying thank you?

They were silent and then he asked, ‘Sure about the coffee?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘That’s a nasty cut to your forehead,’ Karl said.

Silence again.

‘What happened?’

‘Nothing serious,’ Ari Thór said shortly, and the uncomfortable silence resumed.

‘Lousy weather. I suppose you’re not used to this.’

Ari Thór tried not to let himself get distracted, but it was not easy to hide the effects that the unremitting snow, the winds and the bone-shattering cold had on him. He certainly didn’t want to be where he now found himself. He would much have preferred to be in Reykjavík.

Karl seemed to have understood his thoughts and acknowledged that he’d touched on a sensitive point. ‘It can be terrible. It’s even tough for me to get used to it, and I was brought up here. It’s like the walls are closing in on you when the weather’s like this,’ he said with a careless smile.

Damn it. Couldn’t Tómas hurry up?

Ari Thór kept quiet and tried to think of something else. The minutes passed. Maybe Tómas was deliberately delaying his return, giving Karl time to sweat? If that was the case, it didn’t seem to be working.

The ring of Ari Thór’s phone shattered the silence.

He looked at his phone’s screen.

Kristín.

He picked up the phone and set it to silent. This wasn’t the time or the place to answer.

Kristín.
He hadn’t heard from her for a few days and wondered what she wanted. He longed to call her back and cursed her bad timing.

The distance between them was starting to take its toll. Their emails were becoming fewer, the calls far less frequent. He missed
her and dearly wanted to lie close to her at night, when his spirits were at their lowest ebb and when the isolation was at its worst. But he was still upset with her – upset by her reaction to his moving north, upset that she hadn’t gone with him to Siglufjördur that first weekend, upset that she hadn’t called him on Christmas Eve. Admittedly she had called on Christmas Day…

Damn it! Your girlfriend should call on Christmas Eve. Elderly aunts are the ones who call on Christmas Day!

The door was opened suddenly.

‘A word, Ari Thór. Out here.’ There was determination in Tómas’s voice.

‘I’ve spoken to them all,’ he said, when Ari Thór had shut the door behind him. ‘The whole poker school.’

There was a dramatic pause, indicating that there might be something of an actor in Tómas.

‘They all say the same thing. He was there the whole time, turned up around five and was doing well. He didn’t leave until the phone call, when the neighbour called him.’

‘When did Linda leave work?’

‘Around six-thirty. I spoke to the nurse who was on the same shift that Linda was. She finished her shift and had something to eat at the hospital. That seems clear enough. He didn’t do it.’

‘Anything from Hlynur?’

‘No. We’ll leave him to get on with it for a little longer.’

Tómas peered out of the window. The visibility was practically zero. Ari Thór was grateful that he hadn’t had to handle the crime scene.

‘I’m going to try and get hold of the doctor. Wait for me and we’ll get back to the interview.’

Ari Thór could feel his phone ring in his pocket. That would be Kristín again. He wondered if something might be wrong. Tómas was on the phone so he took the opportunity to answer. For a fraction of a second he thought of Ugla’s beautiful face, but quickly shrugged off the distraction.

‘What’s going on?’ Kristín demanded immediately, her voice cold and determined. She sounded curious, even excited.

‘What?’

This wasn’t the greeting he had expected. No
darling
, no warmth.

‘This woman – you know. The woman in the snow.’

What the hell?

News clearly got around fast.

‘How did you know?’

‘I saw it on the web,’ she said and mentioned the website by name. ‘Are you involved in the investigation?’

He went to the computer.

Woman found naked and unconscious in Siglufjördur …

‘I can’t say anything…’ –
my love
. The words dried up before he said them. Words that had been so normal a few weeks ago had become something terribly distant. All the same, he longed to say something pleasant, something affectionate, but she had clearly called simply to ask about the breaking news. His irritation intensified.

‘I can’t talk now. I have to get back to work.’

He could hear Tómas about to finish his own call.

‘I reached the doctor,’ he said, coming over to Ari Thór. ‘He’s going to call again later. She’s still unconscious. She had probably been there around three-quarters of an hour or so, he thinks. It’s unbelievable that she’s still alive, but thank God she is.’

He smiled, obviously relieved not to be dealing with a murder case. Not yet, at least. His expression changed when he saw the computer screen and the report on it.

‘How the hell did that happen?’

‘No idea. My girlfriend called and told me about it.’

‘That’s despicable! First Hrólfur and now this! Everything goes straight into the papers! We can’t get any peace to work.’

‘You don’t think this has anything to do with the accident at the Dramatic Society, do you?’ Ari Thór asked mildly.

‘What? No, hardly. But it’s bloody infuriating. Completely unacceptable that we have to handle two cases like this in a row.’

Even more ‘infuriating’ for Hrólfur and Linda.

Ari Thór remained silence, and then Tómas’s phone rang.

‘Hello?’ Silence. ‘No, dammit,’ he said furiously. ‘You can just leave me to get on with my job!’ There was a short silence. ‘No. I don’t have time. No comment. Did you get that?’ He ended the call.

‘Bloody journalists. Come on, we’ll finish the interview. There’s no reason to keep the man hanging around here,’ Tómas said angrily. ‘This is going to turn into a nightmare. We have to get to the bottom of this right away, otherwise people are going to be terrified.’

Ari Thór glanced quickly out of the window before they went back into the office. It was still snowing. This peaceful little town was being compressed by the snow, no longer a familiar winter embrace but a threat like never before. The white was no longer pure, but tinged blood red.

One thing was certain. Tonight people would lock their doors.

‘I’ll talk to the boy and his mother in the morning,’ Tómas said. ‘We need to get a first-hand account, but that doesn’t change the fact that Karl is not a suspect. I didn’t believe that he could be the perpetrator. I remember him as just a boy, when his mother and father decided to move to Denmark. That lot were always struggling, always short of cash as far as I remember, and there wasn’t a lot of work to be had here. I think they did well for themselves abroad.’

‘And Linda, is she Danish?’

‘Danish-Icelandic. They met in Denmark.’ Tómas’s thoughts appeared to be elsewhere and he seemed worried, as if more than just the pressure of work preyed on his mind. ‘Listen. You mentioned Hrólfur just now …’

‘Yes?’

‘Keep your eyes peeled. We can’t afford any mistakes. Understand?’

Ari Thór nodded his agreement. ‘You think there could be a link?’

‘It’s unlikely, but it’s not something we can rule out. Two deaths in suspicious circumstances …’ Tómas said and his voice died away as an embarrassed look appeared on his face. ‘Sorry. She’s still alive, of course. What worries me is how quickly one incident followed the other, and with Karl and Leifur both at the rehearsal on the evening Hrólfur died.’

‘Leifur? What does he have to do with Linda?’

‘He lives in the apartment above Karl and Linda. Can you go and talk to him?’

‘I’ll do that.’

‘There’s something else about that incident in the theatre. There’s some kind of webcam that sends out pictures of the Town Hall Square, some sort of live camera broadcast from the town for the benefit of people who have moved away. You understand? Maybe something might have been recorded that evening, people who came and went. Check it out, would you?’ he asked, passing Ari Thór a slip of paper with the web address.

A phone rang, this time Tómas’s mobile.

He didn’t say a lot during the short conversation, little more than ‘Yes, OK.’

His expression said more than many words could have and he dropped the phone back into his pocket.

‘She’s still unconscious. There’ll be an emergency flight to take her south. Hopefully the weather will clear up enough for them to fly tomorrow,’ he said. ‘There’s something else the doctor mentioned. We need another word with Karl, right away.’

The heavy drifts had risen higher than any snow Ari Thór had experienced in Reykjavík and he had no doubt that they would deepen further in the coming days.

Karl had answered the phone when he had called a second time. He was still at the hospital.

Visibility was poor. The little police 4×4 bumped along the snow-filled streets towards the hospital, its wipers working overtime to keep the windscreen clear. The snow lit up the darkness, reflecting the lights that shone from every window. Most people had chosen to stay indoors that evening and there was a palpable feeling of brooding uncertainty.

Karl sat placidly in the waiting room, leafing through a newspaper. He nodded to Tómas and Ari Thór before returning to the paper.

‘A word with you.’

He turned the page as if nothing had happened.

Tómas raised his voice. ‘We need to talk to you.’

Karl looked up and peered at them through half-closed eyes. ‘Why? What’s going on?’

‘You have to come with us.’

‘Hadn’t we already been through everything?’ he asked, a new edge to his voice. ‘I’d prefer to stay here, close to her.’

‘Come with us.’

Karl stood up hesitantly and patted Ari Thór hard on the shoulder. ‘All right, then.’

The pain was unbearable.

Damned shoulder.

Clutching their coats tightly against the driving winds, Ari Thór, Tómas and Karl reached the 4×4, setting off once again in the blinding snowstorm.

‘I spoke to the doctor,’ Tómas said, when they were sitting in the office at the police station. He waited for a response, but none was forthcoming.

‘Have you knocked her about?’

The question arrived like a thunderbolt.

‘Have I what?’ Karl demanded with a hostile glare at Tómas, and then another directed at Ari Thór. At first he seemed taken by surprise, but this quickly turned to shock, and then anger.

‘Do you beat your wife?’ Tómas’s voice was louder and harder.

Ari Thór glanced sideways at him.

‘Are you out of your mind? Of course not.’

Before Tómas could ask his next question, Karl interrupted, as if he could see it coming and wanted to head it off. ‘She took a tumble yesterday, she was dusting something in the living room and slipped, or so she said. Is that what you’re asking about?’

Tómas didn’t answer directly. ‘There are clear bruises on her back, as if from a heavy blow or a fall.’

‘Exactly,’ Karl said coolly.

‘Is that the first time you’ve done this to her?’

Karl rose to his feet and looked hard into Tómas’s eyes. ‘I’ve never laid a hand on her. You hear that?’

Tómas remained still. ‘I’d appreciate it if you’d sit down. You’re telling me you’ve nothing to hide?’

‘Nothing at all,’ Karl said, sitting down, his anger cooling, leaving him pale.

‘Wait here a moment.’

Tómas stood up slowly and a look at Ari Thór told him he wanted a word in private.

‘He beat her,’ Tómas said when they were outside. ‘He hit her, or pushed her, but we can’t be sure of that without talking to her. I want you to go to Hlynur and find out how he’s getting on. There might be something there that could give us an idea of what happened. Karl has given us permission to examine the property.’

‘Exactly because he gave us that permission, there’s not likely to be anything there to find,’ Ari Thór said.

‘You’re probably quite right, unfortunately.’

Ari Thór stood in the driving snow outside the house on Thormódsgata. It was late in the evening, but there were lights on in both upstairs and downstairs flats. He went straight to the back garden, where Hlynur was bent over as he searched in the snow, looking for the weapon or any other clue. Ari Thór tapped him on the back. There was no point in calling out to him in this weather.

Hlynur looked up.

‘Nothing. Nothing so far,’ he yelled through the storm.

Ari Thór nodded acknowledgement and pointed towards the house.

Hlynur came closer. ‘Take a look inside. I’ve been through the flat and taken pictures. Didn’t find anything there except her shirt – a red T-shirt on the floor,’ Hlynur said. ‘It’s in an evidence bag in the car.’

The shirt she was wearing when the attack took place?

Ari Thór stepped into the warmth of the flat through the back door, and it was as if he’d gone back a couple of decades, judging by the quaintly colourful furniture and fabrics. There was nothing here that went properly together, at all – although, in a weird sort of way, it did make some kind of cohesive whole. Had she been attacked inside or outside? Could it have been someone she knew, someone she had invited in?

There was no sign of a struggle inside, nothing to be seen in either the living room or the little kitchen. The bright yellow paint on the kitchen walls and cabinets screamed at him, as if it had been cut from some over-the-top, mid-seventies magazine. There was a cheap set of tired kitchen knives next to the stove, with slots for five knives, three small and two larger ones. There were only four knives to be seen; maybe a coincidence, or maybe not.

Ari Thór looked into the bedroom, pausing at the picture of Jesus that hung above the old double bed and letting his mind wander back to his days studying theology.
The Reverend Ari Thór.
He was certainly better off in the police force. What had God ever done for him, other than take away his parents before there had been a chance to get to know them properly?

He looked out of the window.

The snow had stopped falling, as if a tap had been turned off.

That was when he saw the phone, a small, red mobile phone next to the pillow on the unmade bed. Her phone? Probably. He was gripped by a sudden discomfort, a sudden stab to the guts, and his heart beat faster. He put the phone in an evidence bag and placed it in his pocket.

Could it be what he thought it was?

No, hardly. Damn it.

Ari Thór went out through the front door, up the steps and rang Leifur’s doorbell.

Leifur looked tired, but not surprised to be getting a visit from the police so late in the evening.

‘I’m sorry it’s late,’ Ari Thór said. ‘I won’t keep you long; I imagine you have work in the morning.’ He smiled, making an effort to be amicable. The Reverend Ari Thór would undoubtedly have been on the best terms with his parishioners.

Leifur’s voice was dark and low. ‘It’s all right. I have a day off tomorrow.’

A labrador barked at the sight of Ari Thór and came over to greet him. A pleasant, friendly dog, he thought.

There was a smell of freshly sawn wood in the hall, and Ari Thór could smell it again in the living room, reminding him of woodwork classes at school and the things he had knocked together for his parents. The living room was sparsely furnished and had a cold energy – a blank, soulless room almost the diametric opposite of the explosion of colour downstairs. Nothing hung on the walls. A single photograph, of a youngster dressed for his confirmation, stood in a frame on top of the television.

‘Coffee?’ asked Leifur.

‘Tea, if you have it.’

He didn’t feel the need for any overblown courtesy in this place, in this raw, everyday environment with no room for any shred of ceremony.

‘You made the table?’ Tómas had told him that Leifur was a carpenter.

‘S’right.’

Ari Thór could sense there was something on Leifur’s mind.

The tea soon arrived and Leifur sat on the grey couch, the dog at his feet.

‘You’ve been home all evening?’

‘I came home around six. I work at the petrol station.’

‘And you’ve been here since then?’

‘Yes. I was working on something, like I do most evenings. I have a workshop in there and get some jobs now and then to bring in a little extra cash.’

‘It doesn’t bother the neighbours?’

‘It might well do, but I try and finish before ten. The television drowns out any noise before that.’ He took a sip of the tea that he’d made for himself to keep Ari Thór company. ‘We have a tacit agreement. I pretend I don’t hear their rows and they let me work in peace.’

‘Rows?’

‘Yep. A hell of a racket, and it happens all the time. Mostly Karl, you get me? He makes the noise and Linda doesn’t often shout back.’

‘Was there an argument yesterday?’

‘They were at it hammer and tongs yesterday, not that there’s anything unusual about that. There was some damage as well, or so it seemed.’

At last, a step in the right direction, although an account of an argument wouldn’t be enough. It certainly now appeared less likely that she had fallen, but still … it wasn’t enough.

‘Do you think he knocked her down?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. But listen, I don’t take a lot of notice any more. I just reckon it’s an ordinary enough argument. To tell you the truth, Karl doesn’t strike me as the type to beat his wife,’ he said, and lapsed into silence. ‘So what happened tonight?’

‘Did you see anything?’

‘No. Nothing. I was in the workshop and there’s no window looking out onto the garden. I’m in a world of my own when I’m in there. Of course I had a look from the kitchen window when things started to get busy, when you appeared, and then I saw something about it on the web,’ he said, and repeated his question. ‘Do you think Karl did it?’

‘No, there’s nothing to indicate that.’

‘Is she going to make it?’

‘It’s impossible to say… Speaking of arguments …’ it was as well to make use of the opportunity, and Tómas had practically given him carte blanche. ‘I hear there was an argument during the rehearsal when Hrólfur died. Were you aware of that?’

The question about the Dramatic Society didn’t seem to take Leifur by surprise, either.

‘Did I ever! Nobody could have missed it. They had a proper row, Hrólfur was a little drunk and Úlfur was argumentative. Nothing unusual there.’

‘Well, Hrólfur falling to his death was something out of the ordinary.’