Why Did You Lie? (34 page)

‘No.’ The woman didn’t seem surprised by the question. ‘It was the people on the other side.’ She pointed to the house beyond theirs. ‘Steini and I never wake up.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Says she, standing out here in the garden in the middle of the night. But I gather it turned out to be a false alarm. At least nothing came of it. Perhaps they imagined it. Why do you ask?’

‘Oh, it’s just that I keep wondering about the Americans. There’s been no news of them. It occurred to me that it might have been them messing around, shooting at birds.’

‘Better that than somebody shooting at them.’ A sharp gust of wind buffeted them and the woman took a step backwards to keep her balance, still without taking her eyes off the sea. ‘I do hope nothing’s happened to the poor things. That would be terrible. I’ve always thought there was something so sad about dying on holiday. You feel people could at least be spared that when they’ve gone and paid for a trip. Like the way I feel I shouldn’t need to wear a seatbelt in a taxi.’

‘Sadly that’s not the case. People drop like flies on holiday. It’s probably the stress of coping with airports.’ Nói was feeling so light-headed he might have been on drugs. He was prepared to say any old nonsense for the sake of being allowed to stand here beside her, watching the waves rising and falling in the gloom. It must be fatigue. Apart from his nap yesterday evening he hadn’t slept for nearly twenty-four hours.

‘I’ve never been stressed by airports. There’s no point. If I miss my plane, I miss it. That’s all there is to it.’ Her dressing gown flapped, revealing a gleam of white knees. ‘But what do I know? I never fly out to attend business meetings or anything like that. Whether I arrive on holiday a day earlier or later makes no odds.’ She turned to Nói. ‘I don’t know why I’m talking like this. I’m not interested in flying. I’m probably just tired and need to get back to bed. I hope everything will turn out OK for those poor Americans. They were a nice couple.’

Nói watched the woman pick her way over the snow to the back door. Before going inside she turned and scanned the sea one last time, as if to reassure herself that she hadn’t missed anything. Then she disappeared inside and the light over the door went out. Nói was left standing in the same spot, shivering, though not from cold. This was silly, he knew, but he wasn’t in a hurry. He decided to make sure all was well. If he found so much as a footprint in the newly fallen snow near their garden he would call the police and demand that a guard be stationed outside their house.

The snow creaked underfoot but the only tracks he could find were Púki’s. They led down to the coast path and from there doubtless down to the beach. He opened the garden gate and walked a short way beyond their property. There was no sign that anyone had been loitering there this evening. Relieved, Nói suddenly became aware of the freezing temperature again. But instead of hurrying back inside he told himself he should follow the cat down to the shore and persuade him to come inside. It wouldn’t be a good idea for Vala to find a dead mouse in the house tomorrow morning. She was in such a fragile state already and nothing – absolutely nothing – must happen to prevent her from telling him everything. Or rather, writing everything down for him.

‘Here, kitty,’ Nói whispered, pausing before the glistening belt of seaweed at the top of the beach, which suddenly struck him as disgusting, slimy and malodorous. He visualised his foot sinking deep into the decaying pile. ‘Púki! Kitty, kitty. Come here, boy.’ He listened for the bell and thought he heard a faint sound nearby, though he couldn’t work out where it was coming from. Could the cat be trapped or tangled up somehow in this rotten, salty mess of weed? He called again, slightly louder this time. Now the jingling of the bell was unmistakable and he could turn back, confident that Púki would run after him in the hope of a decent meal.

The sound of the waves intensified when Nói turned his back to the sea and he looked round, his heart beating faster, as if he expected to see a tidal wave rearing up on the horizon. But as he suspected, nothing had changed; the breakers were no bigger or smaller than they had been before. Yet he felt uneasy as he walked home, conscious of the sea behind him and everything that lurked in its depths. He drew some comfort from the faint mewing that pursued him all the way back to the house, though the note seemed a little plaintive. He was fairly sure that if the cat could talk it would be complaining. Or warning him.

Nói followed the woman next door’s example and stopped in the doorway for one last look around. He was too far from the shore to be able to make anything out, which probably made matters worse. Imagination was far more powerful than reality. Despite this, Nói continued to stare down at the shore while the cat wandered slowly across the garden. Eventually, Púki made up his mind to come in and Nói closed the door on the cold and dark, and pulled the curtain.

Only then, when he was no longer tuned into the sights and sounds of the night outside, did he sense that something was wrong.

The kitchen lay in darkness.

But he hadn’t turned the light off when he went outside. And even if Tumi had been up and about, instinct told Nói that this was not the explanation.

There was something evil in the air. A floorboard creaked overhead and the hairs prickled on the back of his neck.

There was an uninvited guest upstairs.

Chapter 29

26 January 2014

Time seemed to pass more slowly at night. Nína felt as if she had been sitting in her office for an eternity. Her impatience for the day to begin only seemed to slow time down even more. Perhaps that was why she felt the years were passing more quickly as she grew older; she had nothing special to look forward to any longer. Before, there had always been something: she was waiting to be six so she could start school; she was waiting to be ten and into double figures; she was waiting to be confirmed, to start sixth-form college, to take her driving test, to be old enough to buy alcohol. After that few goals remained. It wasn’t that life had suddenly lost its meaning, it was just that there was nothing specific to look forward to. Every passing year merely shortened your life by exactly twelve months. Mathematicians still hadn’t developed an equation to express this truth: when you want something to happen, time slows down; when you’d like it to put on the brakes, it speeds up. The theory of time’s intransigence – which she was now experiencing firsthand.

At long last her wait was over. At exactly quarter to eight, Nína picked up the receiver and dialled. She had chosen the time with care. She didn’t want to ring too early and wake the woman; nor did she want to catch her after she had left the house, when she might not be able to speak freely.

Instead of a conventional ringing tone, Nína was forced to listen to a few bars of a pop song, endlessly repeated, which had been popular over a year ago and quickly forgotten. By the time the woman finally answered, Nína was on the point of hanging up to be free of the wailing in her ear. She was dreading this phone call; despite her impatience to ring, she felt her nerve going when it actually came to the crunch. There was something so awful about having to talk to Lárus’s widow in light of her own predicament: she was in limbo, neither married nor widowed. She felt much worse about this than she had about talking to Thorbjörg, perhaps because Klara’s loss was more recent.

‘Hello?’ The woman’s voice was muffled and a tap was running in the background.

‘Hello. My name’s Nína Kjartansdóttir and I’m calling from the Greater Reykjavík Police. I’m sorry to disturb you so early.’ She had no compunction about referring to the police. She wasn’t lying, though this wasn’t official business; she was quite literally calling from the headquarters of the Greater Reykjavík force.

‘The police?’ The woman made a spitting sound and when she spoke again her voice was much clearer. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘No, not at all. I’m calling about an investigation in which your husband’s name has cropped up. I should make it absolutely clear that he’s not suspected of being involved in anything criminal.’

She could hear the woman breathing. When the reply finally came it was curt. ‘I think you’ve got the wrong Klara. My husband’s dead. You should take more care next time. What’s your name again?’

‘Nína Kjartansdóttir.’ Afraid the woman was going to hang up, she added quickly: ‘I know your husband’s passed away. That’s why I wanted to talk to you – I was hoping you might be able to provide me with some information.’

‘I’m late for swimming.’ The woman sounded awkward, as if she was aware this was rather a lame excuse.

‘It shouldn’t take long.’ Nína grimaced inadvertently as she waited for an answer. Now she had begun the conversation, she wanted to see it through. ‘I should make it clear that I have a personal connection to the investigation. My husband. Let me stress again that it’s nothing to do with anything criminal.’

‘Are you lot off your rockers? Are you telling me that you’re investigating your own husband on behalf of the police? And you expect me to help you? I can tell you, and the rest of that bloody useless police force, that I’m barely keeping it together at the moment. If you had any consideration at all you’d leave people like me alone. You refused to help me, so I’m certainly not going to help you. You’ve got a bloody nerve asking. I’m speechless, quite frankly.’

Nína thought she was doing pretty well for someone who was speechless but kept this observation to herself. She was merely grateful the woman hadn’t hung up on her. ‘Klara, my husband tried to kill himself at the beginning of December. He’s lying in a coma and isn’t expected to live. I’m in a similar situation to you.’

Silence at the other end. Nína felt instinctively that the woman was fighting back tears. ‘What do you need to know? Make it quick.’

‘I found Lárus’s name on a piece of paper among my husband’s belongings. He’d written it down but there was no explanation why. Given that their fates were so similar, I wanted to find out if they knew each other or how they could conceivably be linked. That’s all.’

‘I can hardly be expected to answer that if you don’t tell me what your husband was called.’ The woman either hadn’t taken it in when Nína said Thröstur was still alive, or she considered him as good as dead.

‘His name’s Thröstur. Thröstur Magnason.’

‘Never heard of him.’ The answer came back instantly – too quickly, Nína thought. But then the woman continued and it turned out that there was an innocent explanation for this. ‘Which doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I didn’t know all Lalli’s acquaintances. We’d only been together just over a year when he died.’

‘Thröstur worked as a journalist. Is it possible that he got in touch with your husband about an article he was writing?’

‘Did you say journalist?’ From Klara’s voice it sounded as if Nína had struck lucky. ‘A journalist did ring Lárus at the end of November or beginning of December and had a long conversation with him. I don’t know his name, though.’

Nína felt her heart beginning to pound. ‘I expect that was Thröstur. Do you have any idea what they talked about?’

‘No. Lalli wouldn’t discuss it. When they started talking he shut the door of his room. All he’d say afterwards was that it had been a journalist and he couldn’t discuss it. I tried to get him to tell me but I gave up in the end and assumed it was work related. Lalli was a lawyer so he could well have been handling a case that had attracted media attention, though I don’t remember anything like that happening while we were together. But then he didn’t really talk to me about his cases, unless he wanted to try out some clever angle on me. He used to bounce ideas off me and I’d tell him what I thought.’ Klara sniffed loudly. When she spoke again her voice was harsher, as if she wanted to push these pleasant memories to the back of her mind. ‘He acted very oddly after that phone call, though. Until you mentioned it, I hadn’t made the connection. But yes, he seemed irritable and anxious.’

‘You don’t happen to remember any of the conversation you overheard?’

The phone crackled as Klara exhaled thoughtfully. ‘Hmm. Let me think. Naturally I only heard the beginning but I got the impression the caller was trying to help Lalli remember him. As if they used to know each other, but Lalli was having trouble placing him. Then he seemed to twig and reacted very oddly – like I said, he went into his room and closed the door. I didn’t hear any more.’

‘So he didn’t mention afterwards how they knew each other?’

‘No. He wouldn’t discuss it. Not at all. He was very pale and preoccupied.’ Klara sniffed again. ‘By the way, it wasn’t your husband who sent Lalli the letters that you lot refused to take seriously?’

Nína was thrown. The possibility hadn’t even entered her head. If Thröstur was linked to Lárus and the family in Skerjafjördur, it was conceivable that he hadn’t received any letters because he was the one who had sent them. ‘No. I doubt it. Though I have no proof apart from the fact that he just wasn’t the type.
Isn’t
the type, I mean.’

‘But you can’t be sure?’ When Nína admitted as much, Klara went on: ‘If your husband sent those letters, I’ve got nothing more to say to you. I believe someone forced those pills down Lalli’s throat and I reckon it was the person that sent those letters who did it. Lalli had no intention of killing himself. He lived too fast for that. He drank too much, smoked too much, ate too much unhealthy food. People like that want to live, strange as it may sound.’

Nína wouldn’t argue with that.

‘Look, I’ve got to go. I’m late and I have nothing further to say to you.’ Instead of hanging up, Klara added, in a rather more conciliatory tone: ‘If you find out something about Lalli that could explain this to me, please call again. Otherwise don’t bother.’

‘I promise I will. Thank you so much—’ But Klara had hung up.

For once there were sounds of movement in the basement. The noise was coming from the corridor leading to the archives. Nína walked past piles of dusty boxes, tools, bicycles and obsolete safety equipment, which would only ever see the light of day again on their way to the tip. She averted her eyes from some broken-necked floor lamps that were lined up like a guard of honour. They reminded her too much of Thröstur, silent and lifeless in the shadows, their heads lolling. She didn’t want to think about him right now; the basement and archives were supposed to be her refuge.