Why Did You Lie? (24 page)

‘I see. Well, I hope there’ll be one for you.’ Nína went to fetch a chair that was over in the corner, as far from the bed as possible, as if to underline the fact that Thorbjörg received no visitors. She sat down, hoping she hadn’t misread her welcome. ‘I don’t know how much you remember from that time but I’d be grateful if you could cast your mind back. Anything would help. All the reports about your husband have disappeared. Or been mislaid.’

‘Huh. They’ll have put them through the shredder straight away. If they had shredders back then. I can’t remember.’

‘I think they’ve simply been misplaced. Thirty years is a long time.’ Nína wasn’t sure the woman had the strength to talk, so she went ahead and told her all about Thröstur, then outlined the little she knew about Thorbjörg’s husband. She placed all the details before this poor yellow woman, as conscientiously as if she were presenting a judge with the information for a search warrant application. When she had finished she tried in vain to interpret Thorbjörg’s reaction.

‘There was no boy involved in the investigation into my Stebbi’s death. I’d have remembered.’ The woman licked her cracked lips. ‘There were no witnesses, unfortunately. That was the problem.’

‘Are you quite sure?’ Nína was wrong-footed. Was it possible that Thröstur had been involved in a completely different suicide case? Or another case entirely? She had assumed that since the report had been filed under suicide it must have referred to that type of incident. But of course the document could simply have ended up in the wrong folder.

‘If there’d been any witnesses I’d have looked them up and spoken to them personally. I was never satisfied with the way they dealt with the case and I did everything I could to investigate it myself. It sounds like the same thing’s happening with your husband. History’s repeating itself.’

Nína nodded. Then it dawned on her that the woman hadn’t been informed. The police had judged, rightly, that she couldn’t be trusted to leave the witnesses alone. Especially since the witnesses were children. ‘OK. Forget them. It doesn’t alter the rest. We live in your old flat and our husbands both decided one day to walk out into that horrible garage and take their own lives.’ She didn’t bother to repeat that the men had both been journalists. It was irrelevant. ‘At the time you believed something untoward had happened and now I’m in the same boat. Perhaps we can help each other out.’

Thorbjörg laughed mirthlessly, then heaved a gusty sigh. Nína thought she could almost smell stale cigarettes, as if the exhalation had released molecules of ancient smoke. ‘You’re nearly three decades too late, dear. Where were you when I still saw any point in fighting?’

‘Playing with my Barbie.’

‘Think you’ll end up in here? Like me?’ The words contained neither mockery nor malice. ‘Let me tell you something. I drank too much before my Stebbi died. He drank too. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up quite the way I have, but I was on the wrong track anyway. And it didn’t help that we belonged to that famous generation you may have heard of, who got screwed over financially. We all bought property with index-linked loans, and received index-linked wages, and ended up in terrible debt when the government abolished wage indexation in ’83. We were on the brink of bankruptcy but we managed to stay afloat by renting out the garage and tightening our belts. When Stebbi died, more than half the family income disappeared and so did our tenant. Which was understandable really as his business was about as healthy as our finances. One króna in, two krónur out. Anyhow. In less than a year I’d lost my husband and my home. And I dealt with it by drinking. Then drinking some more. The upshot was that I lost the one thing that should have mattered to me more than anything else in the world: my son. In the end he gave up on me and I don’t blame him. I’m amazed he hung in there as long as he did.’

Thorbjörg stared down at her belly, then looked up at Nína, her yellow eyes almost kind. ‘So, to answer my own question, no, I don’t think you’ll suffer the same fate as me. You don’t look like an addict. More like an AA type, as I said when you came in.’

‘I don’t have any problems with booze, but I’m not from AA either. Can I ask you a question?’

‘Feel free. I’m not going anywhere. And it’s fun having a visitor. Though you could’ve brought me flowers – that would really have shocked the nurses.’

‘Since you lost the tenant of the garage, is it possible that your husband picked that spot as some sort of sign that his decision was linked to money worries? That he didn’t want to live any more when he saw what was going to happen to your flat? I have to ask, though I know from experience how painful questions like this can be.’

‘Stebbi didn’t kill himself. I’m as sure of that now as I was at the time. We may have been skint, we may not have been model citizens but he was happy. He loved me, he adored our son, and I’ve never met anyone who got as much of a kick out of his work as he did. Stebbi was regarded as one of the top journalists in the country in those days. Nobody could touch him.’

Thorbjörg rose up in bed as she told Nína this, but then doubled up with a coughing fit. When she could speak again she added: ‘The explanation the police came up with for him choosing the garage was that he’d been irresistibly drawn to the ceiling. You know … to the metal tracks the garage door runs along.’ Glancing at Nína, she saw that she had no need to explain. It was obvious that Thröstur had used the same support. ‘Anyway, they said that suicidal people tend to choose the strangest places. There’s no room left in their minds for anything else and they just don’t even consider the feelings of the people they leave behind or the shock they’ll get from finding them dangling from the ceiling. I was told they’re too ill to grasp the impact it’ll have on their families. And that was supposed to make me feel better.’ She snorted. ‘But the tenant had gone, the garage was empty and Stebbi knew that, of course. All that was in there were some tools the tenant hadn’t cleared out yet.’

‘Were they valuable? Is there any chance your husband could have run into a burglar who knocked him out, then hanged him?’ The suggestion was so ludicrous that Nína wished she could unsay it. She hastened to ask something that would sound more plausible. ‘Or that someone wanted him dead because of a story he was working on?’

‘Stebbi would never have let a burglar get the better of him. He was a big, strong bloke and anyway burglars don’t often get into fights with people. They usually run away, don’t they?’

‘Yes, as a rule. Almost always, in fact. But what about the stories he was working on? Could they have had something to do with it?’

‘I don’t know. I can’t really see how Stebbi could have ended up in the garage with someone he’d contacted about an article. It just doesn’t make sense. I knew some of the things he was working on. With some stories he would try out theories or hunches on me to see how they sounded. Sometimes I listened, sometimes I didn’t. There are limits to how much you can bear to hear when it comes to crime. We hadn’t been together long when I begged him to spare me the worst details, and once our son was old enough to understand what we were talking about, Stebbi pretty much stopped discussing that stuff. At least until the boy was in bed. But though I don’t know exactly what he was working on at the time, I can’t believe his death was connected to it. After all, Icelanders are past masters at forgetting stuff; if you get bad press for something, in no time at all collective amnesia sets in and people have nothing but a dim memory of hearing something negative about you. No one would bother to kill a journalist to suppress a news story. There’s never that much at stake. You don’t think
your
husband could have been killed because of a story he was working on, do you?’

Nína started but covered it up. ‘No. Though I haven’t actually given it any thought. I’ve only recently begun to consider the possibility that his death might not have been voluntary. Before that I’d mostly been wondering what had been going on in his life that I hadn’t noticed – blaming myself.’

‘I know the feeling.’ Thorbjörg sank back against the pillow, her eyes on the ceiling. ‘What you need is a decent cop. I was too stupid to take advantage of it but there was one officer who seemed to understand, and feel sorry for me. He was very concerned about my son, who didn’t have many allies at the time. Just a drunken mother and a dead father.’ Thorbjörg turned her head back to Nína, looking suddenly exhausted. She closed her eyes and her jaw slackened. ‘You seem like you’ve got your head screwed on and are capable of speaking up for yourself. You should be able to persuade someone, get them interested in taking a closer look. I think you should go for it. You’re bound to have more luck than me, with that AA vibe you’ve got.’

Nína wanted to turn and examine herself in the mirror behind her. But it would have to wait. ‘Actually, I’m a police officer myself.’ She hadn’t mentioned the fact before as she had come here in the capacity of soon-to-be widow meeting a veteran. ‘Who was this decent cop, if you don’t mind my asking?’ She would bet her bottom dollar that it was the man in the video who she had admired for his gentle touch with a juvenile witness.

‘He wasn’t in charge of the inquiry; he was just a nice, quite young bloke who came round on some of the call-outs. The case seemed to touch a nerve with him. Unlike those other tossers.’ The woman turned her head away again. ‘Örvar, that was it. Can’t remember his patronymic.’

Chapter 20

25 January 2014

‘There was a fucking dead cat on the barbecue! What exactly would it take to get you and your colleagues to take me seriously?’ Realising how loudly he was speaking, Nói lowered his voice. His experience of agitated clients was that the higher the decibels, the less desire he felt to help them. ‘OK, I know I’m a bit worked up; I’ll try and control myself. It’s just not every day you see something like that.’ He moved over to the sitting-room window, drew back the curtains and peered out. The back garden looked bleak and colourless under a light dusting of snow. There was no one to be seen on the path by the sea. ‘No. There’s no way the animal could have got there by itself. No way.’ Nói bent closer to the glass to see in both directions and reassure himself that there was nobody standing by the hedge, watching the house. ‘How should I know if the barbecue lid was open and the cat closed it behind itself? Would a cat be capable of that? The lid weighs a ton. Anyway, I reckon it was dead before it was put in there – not that I’m an expert. You must have someone who could verify that. It had a collar on but I couldn’t bring myself to touch it to read the tag.’

Vala was sitting on the sofa with Púki in her arms, her eyes on Nói. Finally it seemed to have sunk in that something might be seriously wrong. Instead of dismissing his concerns she was gnawing at her thumbnail, which she only did when she was truly anxious. Nói turned away and concentrated on the telephone conversation. On the way back from the chalet he had thought hard about what to say to the police to persuade them to take him seriously this time. He hadn’t wanted to phone from the car out of consideration for Tumi, so he’d had plenty of time to rehearse. To practise being sober and dignified but firm.

Then he’d gone and made a hash of it.

He didn’t regret postponing the call, as there had been no reason to worry Tumi unnecessarily. The boy didn’t seem affected but the shock might well sink in later, and he must have overheard snatches of this conversation from upstairs, since Nói had raised his voice more than once. ‘Yes, thanks. I’d be grateful. I’ll be home all day … Thanks … Yes, this is my number.’ Nói gave the police his address again, both for the house and the chalet, then hung up. ‘They’re going to send round an officer. And someone from the Selfoss force is going up to the chalet.’ He sat down beside Vala on the sofa. ‘Christ.’

‘Do you think
they
did it? Killed a cat and put it on the barbecue?’ She tightened her grip on Púki, who mewed in protest.

‘I don’t know what to think. Except that we can be thankful Púki’s safe. The cat on the barbecue was almost identical. Of course, every other cat in Iceland’s a tabby, but still …’

‘Do you think it had been there long?’

‘I don’t know. It didn’t smell too bad but perhaps that was because it was frozen. I can’t even think about it without wanting to throw up.’

‘Could they have gone crazy because the barbecue wasn’t working properly and done this for revenge?’

‘They’re clearly rather odd, but I can’t picture them charging around the countryside, out of their minds with rage, looking for a cat to kill. It would be an absurd way of getting even with us. Mind you, it’s crazy for a pet cat to end up on a barbecue whichever way you look at it.’

‘And you’re sure it hadn’t been cooked?’

Nói fought back nausea. ‘Positive. It was just lying there. Its fur wasn’t even singed.’

‘Perhaps they were about to cook themselves a cat when they discovered the barbecue was broken. They eat cats in Asia.’

Nói tipped his head back and closed his eyes. ‘They weren’t Asian.’ He groaned. ‘The whole thing’s so sick. Why the hell did we get involved with this fucking house swap?’ He thought of what his employee had said and pictured the man’s expression if he ever found out what had happened. Running up the mileage on the family car seemed pretty trivial in comparison. ‘I just want to hand over the scissors, notes and recordings from the chalet and let the police take care of finding our keys and getting to the bottom of it all. After that I never want to have to think about it again.’

‘Maybe they didn’t kill the cat, just found the corpse and meant to cremate the animal instead of burying it. Maybe that’s what people do in America.’ Her voice was whiny, as if she was trying to force him to agree. Nói wanted to yell that she should have listened to him from the beginning, but realised this would achieve nothing. The cat would still have been waiting for him on the barbecue. He felt a spiteful urge to get the last word by saying she should try educating herself about other countries while she was pounding away on the treadmill, but he bit his tongue. ‘The cops’ll sort it out, Vala.’ Nói scratched the cat behind its ears but the thought of the dead animal on the blackened rack made him snatch back his hand and wipe it on his trousers. ‘Where are the notes?’