‘Let’s get this bloody nightmare over,’ Othello boomed, dragging Iago off towards the stage. Desdemona smiled sweetly at Erlendur.
‘What did Tryggvi ask him to do?’ Erlendur called after them.
Orri stopped and looked back at Erlendur.
‘I don’t know if there’s any truth in it but it’s what I heard years ago.’
‘What? What did you hear?’
‘Tryggvi asked him to kill him.’
‘Kill him? Is he dead?’
‘No, full of beans but weird in the head.’
‘What are you trying to tell me? I don’t under-’
‘It was an experiment that the cousin carried out on Tryggvi.’
‘What kind of experiment?’
‘The way I heard it, he stopped Tryggvi’s heart for several minutes before resuscitating him. They said Tryggvi was never the same again.’
And with that the trio stormed on stage.
Next day, Erlendur dug up the old reports in the police archives about the incident on Lake Thingvallavatn. He read the statement by María’s mother Leonóra, as well as the expert witness’s verdict on the boat and outboard motor. He found a postmortem report in the files indicating that Magnús had drowned in the cold water. Apparently, no statement had been taken from the little girl. The case was treated as an accident. Erlendur checked who had led the investigation. It was an officer called Níels. He sighed. He had never had any time for Níels. They had been working for the CID for an equal length of time but, unlike Erlendur, Níels was dilatory; his cases had a tendency to become drawn out to the point of invalidation, and were almost invariably sloppily handled.
Níels was on his coffee break. He was joking with the women in the cafeteria when Erlendur asked if he could have a word.
‘What was it you wanted, Erlendur old chap?’ Níels asked, with his habitual air of empty condescension. ‘Friend’ and ‘chap’, ‘chum’ and ‘my old mate’ were words he appended to every sentence, insignificant in themselves but deeply meaningful in the mouth of Níels who had full confidence in his own superiority, despite the lack of any foundation for this.
Erlendur drew him aside and sat down with him in the cafeteria before asking if he remembered the accident on Lake Thingvallavatn, and Leonóra and her daughter María.
‘It was an open-and-shut case, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, I expect so. You don’t happen to remember anything unusual about the circumstances: the people involved or the accident itself?’
Níels adopted an expression intended to convey the idea that he was racking his brains in an effort to recall the events at Lake Thingvallavatn.
‘You’re not trying to uncover a crime after all these years?’ he asked.
‘No, far from it. The little girl you saw at the scene with her mother died the other day. It was her father who drowned.’
‘I don’t recall anything unusual in connection with that investigation,’ Níels said.
‘How did the propeller come loose from the engine?’
‘Well, naturally I don’t have the exact details on the tip of my tongue,’ Níels answered warily. He regarded Erlendur with suspicion. Not everyone at the police station appreciated it when Erlendur started digging up old cases.
‘Do you remember what forensics said?’
‘Wear and tear, wasn’t it?’ Níels asked.
‘Something like that,’ Erlendur replied. ‘Not that that explains much. The engine was old and clapped out and hadn’t received any particular maintenance. What did they tell you that didn’t go in the report?’
‘Gudfinnur was in charge of the examination. But he’s dead now.’
‘So we can’t ask him. You know that not everything goes into the reports.’
‘What is it with you and the past?’
Erlendur shrugged.
‘What are you trying to get at, old chap?’
‘Nothing,’ Erlendur said, controlling his impatience.
‘What exactly do you need to know?’ Níels asked.
‘How did they react, the wife and daughter? Can you remember?’
‘There was nothing unnatural about their reactions. It was a tragic accident. Everyone could see that. The woman almost had a breakdown.’
‘The propeller was never found.’
‘No.’
‘And there was no way of establishing exactly how it had come loose?’
‘No. The man was alone in the boat and probably started tinkering with the engine, fell overboard and drowned. His wife didn’t see what happened, nor did the girl. The wife suddenly noticed that the boat was empty. Then she heard the man cry out briefly but by then it was too late.’
‘Do you remember…?’
‘We talked to the retailer,’ Níels said. ‘Or Gudfinnur did. Talked to someone at the company that sold the outboard motors.’
‘Yes, it’s in the report.’
‘He said the propeller wouldn’t come off that easily. It required some effort.’
‘Could it have gone aground?’
‘There was no evidence of that. But the wife told us that her husband had been messing around with the engine the day before. She didn’t ask him about it and didn’t know what he was doing. He might have loosened the propeller accidentally.’
‘Her husband?’
‘Yes.’
Erlendur recalled Ingvar telling him that Magnús did not have the first clue about engines.
‘Do you remember the girl’s reaction when you arrived on the scene?’ he asked.
‘Wasn’t she only about ten or so?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, of course she was like any child who suffers a shock. She clung to her mother. Never left her side.’
‘I can’t see from the reports that you spoke to her at all.’
‘No, we didn’t, or at least not to any extent. We didn’t see any reason to. Children aren’t the most reliable witnesses.’
Erlendur was on the point of objecting when he was interrupted by two uniformed officers entering the cafeteria and hailing Níels.
‘Where are you going with this?’ Níels asked. ‘What’s it all about?’
‘Fear of the dark,’ Erlendur replied. ‘Simple fear of the dark.’
14
María’s friend Karen met Erlendur at the door of her home, a spacious flat in a block situated in the west end of Reykjavík. She had been expecting him and invited him inside. When he had called her after their meeting at the police station she had given him a list of names of people connected with María, as well as discussing their friendship that had begun when they were eleven and had shared a desk at their new school. Leonóra had recently moved María to a different school due to her dissatisfaction with the governors and teachers at her previous one where she had been subjected to minor bullying. Given little say in the matter, María was trying her best to find her feet among the unfamiliar faces at her new school. Karen meanwhile had just moved to the neighbourhood and knew no one. Leonóra used to drive María to school every morning and fetch her in the afternoons, and once María asked if Karen would like to come home with her. Leonóra welcomed Karen as her daughter’s new friend, and from then on their friendship quickly blossomed under her protection.
‘Actually her mother was a bit overbearing,’ Karen told Erlendur. ‘She enrolled us for ballet, which neither of us could stand, took us to the cinema, arranged for me to come for sleep-overs with them in Grafarvogur, though my mum never let me go for sleepovers with any other friends. She organised cinema tickets, made popcorn for us when we were watching TV. We hardly had a moment to play by ourselves. Leonóra was very kind, don’t get me wrong, but sometimes you’d just had enough of her. She wrapped María in cotton wool. But although she was spoilt to death in my opinion, María never lorded it over other people: she was always polite and dutiful and good – it was her nature.’
Karen and María’s friendship grew closer by the year. They graduated from sixth-form college together, Karen embarked on a teaching degree and María read history, they travelled abroad together, formed a sewing circle that eventually fizzled out, took holidays together, spent weekends in the country and went out on the town together.