Why Did You Lie? (14 page)

‘No.’ Nói glanced at the car keys on his desk and his fingers started inching towards them. ‘Sure it wasn’t just the postman shoving something through the letterbox? Or Púki rattling around in the kitchen?’

Tumi didn’t answer straight away but Nói could hear his rapid breathing. ‘No, Púki’s here on my bed. And it wasn’t the postman.’

‘Perhaps your mum popped home to fetch something.’ Nói hesitated. ‘What kind of noise was it?’

‘It just sounded like someone moving about downstairs. I don’t know, I can’t describe it.’ He sounded resentful, as he always did when asked to clarify something. Nói didn’t know why but the boy seemed incapable of expressing himself. He was inclined to blame the school system. It was easier than admitting that it might be his and Vala’s fault.

Nói stared at the screen in front of him. The rule of thumb that a software designer should write an average of ten lines of code a day suddenly seemed absurd: he would be lucky to finish one. What had he been thinking of to say he’d be done with this by four? He checked his e-mail distractedly but there was still no reply from the Americans. Why weren’t they answering their messages? Did they think he was just going to forget about the keys if he didn’t hear from them? And weren’t they at all bothered about getting the man’s coat back? He could understand if they didn’t care about the dirty washing. Perhaps he had pissed them off by writing again this morning to ask about the scissors. But damn it, surely they couldn’t be that touchy? The only acceptable excuse was that they hadn’t had a chance to check their e-mail yet. Nói closed his eyes and massaged them. ‘I’m thinking of knocking off early. Why don’t I just come home now and bring us a couple of burgers for lunch?’

‘Yeah, that’d be great.’ Tumi seemed relieved; the resentment had vanished from his voice. ‘I’m starving and I don’t feel like anything from the fridge. There’s nothing but the stuff those people left and I don’t want that. It seems disgusting somehow.’

Nói just managed to stop himself from agreeing wholeheartedly. ‘What nonsense. I’ll be home in an hour at most.’ He hung up and tried to focus on work. But the black text of the software program kept retreating before his eyes and in the end he decided to call it a day. Why wait? He wasn’t going to achieve anything in the next half-hour. On the way out he paused by the secretary and told her he wouldn’t be back this afternoon. For an instant he could have sworn she looked pleased, though she was usually better at controlling her expression. Still, this annoyed Nói less than the beer cans he had spotted here and there on people’s desks. Evidently a degree of anarchy had reigned in the office during his absence and he suspected that the problems he was sure must have been piling up had simply been swept under the carpet. Or thrown out. But he didn’t say anything – plenty of time for that after the weekend.

While queuing at the window of the drive-in burger joint he tried to ring Vala but wasn’t surprised when she didn’t answer. She was rarely able to take calls at work. He texted her:
Ring when free – decided to go home
. Then he tossed the phone on the passenger seat and wondered what to say if she called and asked why. He knew she felt he had a tendency to read too much into things – but then her habit of assuming everything was fine got on his nerves too. Like now. She had snapped at him yesterday evening when he couldn’t stop talking about the scissors, and this morning she had sighed loudly when he tried to raise the subject of the Americans again. He’d had the sense to shut up. He could just picture her face if she found out the real reason for his leaving work early. He would never let on that he’d hurried home to Tumi because he had a sense of foreboding. Tightening his grip on the steering wheel, he restrained the urge to pull out of the queue and race home. His tension eased a little when his turn at the window finally came.

Nói felt his heartbeat slowing to normal as soon as their house appeared at the end of the street. But it missed a beat when he entered their drive and noticed the front door standing ajar. Switching off the engine, he stared at the door as it swung gently to and fro in the breeze as if controlled by an invisible hand. Nói sat paralysed in his seat, watching to see if the wind would slam the door shut. Then he came to his senses, grabbed the food and got out of the car. As he walked towards it the door continued to swing gently, pausing just short of the frame when he reached it. There it remained, as still as if it were shut. He pushed it wide, stepped inside and inspected it thoroughly before closing it behind him, as if he expected to find an explanation for why it had been open.

But of course there was nothing to see, except that it was time to varnish the wood again. He couldn’t think of any sensible explanation, unless Vala had left the door on the latch when they’d gone out this morning. Or Tumi had opened it and forgotten to shut it again. But that was hard to believe.

Nói called out to his son and received an unintelligible yell from upstairs in reply. Shortly afterwards Tumi appeared looking undisturbed, with Púki in his arms. He was barefoot, in jeans and a T-shirt that hung lopsided from his shoulders. The cat closed its eyes, opened its jaw and yawned, revealing a ridged palate and sharp canines. Then it grew restless and jumped down on the floor.

‘Did you get hold of Mum at all?’

Nói put down the bag on the kitchen table. The food seemed to have shrunk to a small lump at the bottom. It smelt of frying fat. ‘No, she didn’t pick up. But I think I know what you heard. The front door was open. We can’t have closed it properly when we left this morning. Unless you opened it?’

Tumi frowned. ‘Duh … no. And it wasn’t that kind of noise.’ He put a limp chip in his mouth. ‘I know exactly what the door sounds like. The computer started up too.’ He pointed with a chip at the black monitor in the corner.

‘Did you turn it off?’

‘No. I haven’t been down. Not until you arrived just now.’

‘The computer’s off, Tumi. You can see that for yourself.’

‘Isn’t it just hibernating? This was a while ago.’

‘No. There’s no light showing. You must have been hearing things or dreaming.’

Tumi stared hard at the computer as if he could activate it with his eyes. ‘I wasn’t hearing things. I know the Windows start-up sound. And I wasn’t dreaming either. There was someone downstairs. It must have been Mum. Or some burglar or crackhead.’

‘Breaking in to use the internet? I sincerely doubt it.’

‘Well, what about the people who were staying here? Are you sure they’ve left the country? Perhaps they came back to fetch their stuff.’

‘Of course they’ve gone.’ Nói didn’t even like talking about it. The last thing he wanted was to become obsessed with the idea that their guests were still prowling around. He would rather blame it on the wind but if Tumi insisted it was a burglar, they would just have to agree to disagree. Listlessly, Nói removed the wrapper from one of the burgers, which turned out to be even less appetising than he had feared. Suddenly his hunger was gone. ‘The wind must have blown something in through the open door.’

‘Uh-uh.’ The sweating burger seemed to hit the spot with Tumi. ‘It definitely wasn’t the wind. It couldn’t turn on a computer.’

Nói contained himself until his son had finished eating and he himself had wrapped the remaining half of his burger in the packaging and thrown it away. The food tasted odd, like earth. He suspected the smell was in his own nostrils but even so he felt an urgent need to brush his teeth. He must be more exhausted than he’d realised. ‘I’m going to put my feet up with the papers.’ A pile of newspapers had accumulated during their holiday and if he didn’t get a move on and read them, Vala would throw them out. She didn’t understand how anyone could be interested in old news. But old news suited him perfectly: no need to waste time wondering how things would turn out – events began and ran their course. The whole story was contained in the heap of papers. Like the annual news round-up but in smaller doses. ‘You planning to go out at all?’

‘Nah. Not for the moment anyway.’ Tumi threw the burger wrapper in the bin. He yawned. There was tomato ketchup in the corner of his mouth. ‘I’m going to jump in the shower, then I’ll do something.’

Nói watched his son slouch out of the kitchen, hardly bothering to lift his feet, but resisted the temptation to tell the boy to buck up and go out and get some fresh air. Strange how his son could be so relaxed now after his earlier anxiety about a possible intruder. His father’s presence clearly filled him with confidence, though Nói had to admit to himself that he wouldn’t be much use in a crisis. What would he do if a junkie or a burglar suddenly leapt out of hiding? Search for the scissors in the plastic bag he had put in the back of the cupboard in the larder? On second thoughts, he realised he could probably handle a situation like that better than many.

While he was waiting for the water in the tap to run cold, he contemplated what was left of the snow outside.

A man wearing a long dark raincoat was standing on the footpath between their property and the beach, too far away for Nói to see if he was facing the house or looking out to sea. Nói waited to see what the man would do – perhaps he was Tumi’s burglar or crackhead, but he didn’t move and Nói’s patience ran out. He drained the brimming glass and turned away from the window. The man remained standing in the same spot.

The water took away the taste of earth and Nói felt a little better. He decided to put off reading the papers for a while and check on the car instead. His employee’s tale about house guests abusing a borrowed car bothered him, though he thought it unlikely there was anything to fear in this case. Surely it was extremely unusual for people to drive for days in cars they had been loaned. Petrol wasn’t cheap, after all. But a seed of doubt had been sown in his mind and he wouldn’t be able to relax until he had at least looked at the clock.

The wind was bitter and cut right through his thin shirt. The shrill bleeping of the car’s electronic lock shattered a hush that seemed unusual for this time of day: no roar of engines from the airport; almost no traffic passing through the neighbourhood. There was an air of finality about the silence that descended after the brief bleeping. As if he had suddenly gone deaf and would never hear again.

Inside the car was a strange earthy smell that reminded Nói of the taste he’d had to rinse away. He grimaced and a shiver ran through him. The car was spick and span but the smell made him queasy. Hastily he climbed in to look at the mileage. It was within normal limits. Rather less than he had expected, in fact. The most the couple had driven was up to the chalet and possibly to the popular tourist sites on the Golden Circle – the waterfall at Gullfoss and hot springs at Geysir. All he need do was take the car in for a thorough valeting to get rid of the smell, then all would be fine again.

Feeling as if a load had been taken off his mind, he was about to step out of the car when from the corner of his eye he noticed that the man on the footpath was now standing at the end of the street. The bare branches of the shrubs on the boundary cast their shadows on him and his face was hidden by a hood. Cautiously Nói pushed the door open, fighting a desire to turn the key in the ignition and make a hasty getaway. But Tumi was in the house with the door unlocked. Nói got out and when he slammed the car door the man turned unhurriedly away and walked back towards the coast path. His gait was odd, more like Tumi’s slouching shuffle than that of an adult. Perhaps it was one of Tumi’s shy friends.

Then Nói remembered the video footage from the chalet and couldn’t help wondering if this was the same person who had stuck the circular under the door there. But the idea was ridiculous. All they had in common was the hood hiding their face, and everyone wore hoods nowadays, so it would be absurd to draw any conclusions from that.

Nói hurried back to the house. When he was a few paces short of the door it opened. Slowly but surely, with a slight squeaking of the badly oiled hinges. Without his knowing where the words came from, a brief greeting sprang into his mind:
Welcome back, liar.

Chapter 11

22 January 2014

Nína leant against the doorway of Thröstur’s hospital room. She had been woken by backache from her uncomfortable doze in the armchair by his bed but she could feel the pain dissipating now that she was standing up. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept the whole night through or woken refreshed in the morning. Her lids felt heavy, her eyes dry, and she rubbed them before peering down the corridor. As always there were all kinds of trolleys, beds, equipment and other paraphernalia lined up along the walls, as if the architects had forgotten to provide the building with any storage space. A rare peace had fallen; apart from a quiet humming and the odd bleep from the machines linked up to the sleeping patients all was silent. No one was about and the night shift staff were sitting down somewhere out of sight.

The pain in Nína’s back intensified as she stretched. Her gaze wandered down the corridor once more before she returned to the room. Of course nothing had changed and everything was in its place. Yet Nína had an odd fancy that the shadows of the terminal patients were lurking behind the furniture in the ward. They had to be hiding somewhere, as there was no hint of them in the rooms where their owners lay supine under the glare of the ceiling lights. Before her imagination could lead her any further astray the sucking noise of Thröstur’s ventilator wrenched her back to earth. She closed the door carefully and sat down again in the by now far too familiar chair. What she really wanted to do at this moment was go back to the police station and carry on the search for more documents or video tapes, but this would be noticed. She would be reprimanded for turning up outside working hours, and it might lend support to the arguments of those who were eager to diagnose her as neurotic and force her to take leave. How would she be able to search for the documents then?

Thröstur was as motionless as the equipment in the corridor. This was to be expected; the links between his muscles and brain had been severed when the noose tightened round his neck, and oxygen deprivation had done the rest. There was no hope that he would ever move again. He lay in the same position as always, on his back with his arms above the duvet. Occasionally there was a slight change but that was because he had been washed, shaved or examined. Afterwards one of his arms might be arranged a tiny bit further from his side than before, or his body might lie a little crooked in the bed. There was no other sign of movement. His brain had gone on a permanent holiday and there was no one home to control his muscles. His body was so shrunken that he almost looked like a stranger. The speed at which he was wasting away was the most disconcerting aspect for Nína. People on diets battled for months, if not years, to rid themselves of those last five stubborn pounds but here lay Thröstur, not moving a muscle, withering away before her eyes in spite of the nutrition he received through the drip. Even his face was unrecognisable: his cheeks were hollow, his closed eyes had sunk deep into their sockets, and his lips were as pale as his skin and so dry that she was afraid they might flake off. Gently she applied some Vaseline to them, taking care not to disturb the mouthpiece that connected his blue tracheal tube to the ventilator. As usual the Vaseline formed clumps on his crusted lips and spread to the sticky tape that was holding the tube in place.