‘Goodbye.’
‘Yes, goodbye.’
María had not had any problems with hallucinations for a long time until her father appeared to her in the garden and shouted at her to be careful, No one else had seen him, No one else had heard him shouting, Her father vanished as suddenly as he had appeared and all María could hear afterwards was the moaning of the wind and the slamming of the gate, Fleeing inside, she locked the door to the veranda, retreated into her bedroom and buried her face in the pillow.
She had heard that voice before during the seance with Andersen, exactly the same words of warning, but did not know what they were supposed to mean, why they had been said and how much notice she should take of them, She did not know what she was supposed to be careful of.
She was still awake when Baldvin came home late that night and they returned to the topic of the seance with Magdalena that María had told him about, She described the meeting and its effect on her more fully, saying she not only believed what had emerged there but wanted to believe it too, Wanted to believe that there was another life after this one, That our time on Earth was not the end of it all.
Baldvin lay listening to her in silence.
‘Have I ever told you about a guy I knew when I was studying medicine? His name was Tryggvi,’ he said.
‘No,’ María said.
‘He wanted to try and find out if there was an afterlife, He persuaded his cousin who was a doctor to help him, He had read something about a French experiment on near-death experience, We studied medicine together, There was a girl with us, The four of us took part in the experiment.’
María listened attentively to Baldvin’s account of how they had stopped Tryggvi’s heart, then revived him, and how it had worked perfectly except that Tryggvi had had nothing to tell.
‘What became of him?’ María asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Baldvin said, ‘I haven’t seen him since.’
A long silence descended on the room where Leonóra’s final struggle had taken place.
‘Do you think…?’
María broke off.
‘What?’ Baldvin asked.
‘Do you think you could do something like that?’
‘It’s perfectly possible.’
‘Could you do it to me? For me?’
‘Foryou?’
‘Yes, I… I’ve read so much about near-death experiences.’
‘I know.’
‘Is the experiment risky?’
‘It could be,’ Baldvin said. ‘I’m not going to-’
‘Could we do it here?’ María asked. ‘Here at home?’
‘María… ’
‘Is it very dangerous?’
‘María, I can’t-’
‘Is it very dangerous?’
‘That… that depends, Are you seriously considering it?’
‘Why not?’ María said, ‘What have I got to lose?’
‘Are you sure?’ Baldvin said.
‘Did you lock the gate?’ María asked.
‘Yes, I locked it when I came in.’
‘He looked horrible,’ María said, ‘Horrible.’
‘Who?’
‘Dad. I know he’s not happy, Hecan’t be happy. I know that, Hewasn’t meant to go like that, Hewasn’t meant to die like that, It should never have happened.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Tell me more about this Tryggvi,’ María said. ‘What happened exactly? How would you go about something like that? What would you need to make it work?’
27
Erlendur called his daughter early on Sunday morning and asked if she would like to come for a drive. He wanted to spend the day driving around the Reykjavík area, looking at lakes. Eva Lind was asleep when he rang and it took her a while to grasp what he was saying. She was unenthusiastic but Erlendur would not accept no for an answer. Surely she didn’t have much to do that Sunday, any more than she ever did. It was not as if she went to church, after all. Finally she gave in. Erlendur tried to get hold of Sindri Snaer but received a message saying that either his phone was switched off or he was out of range. Valgerdur was working all weekend.
Under normal circumstances he would have made the trip alone and been happy to do so, but this time he wanted Eva’s company; naturally he was fed up with his own, as she was quick to point out during their phone conversation. He smiled. Eva Lind was in a better humour than usual, even though her idea of bringing Erlendur and Halldóra together had led nowhere and her dream of establishing a better relationship between her parents seemed doomed to failure.
Neither mentioned the subject as they drove out of town together. It was a beautiful autumnal day. The sun shone low over the Bláfjöll range and the weather was still but cold. They stopped off at a kiosk where Erlendur bought them some sandwiches and cigarettes. He had made a thermos of coffee before leaving home. There was a blanket in the boot. It occurred to him as he drove away from the shop that he had never been for a Sunday outing with Eva Lind before.
They began with a small circuit of the city. He had studied detailed maps of Reykjavík and its vicinity, and was surprised at the vast number of lakes that were to be found in a relatively small area. They were almost uncountable. He and Eva Lind started at Lake Ellidavatn where a new suburb had sprung up, then did a circuit of Raudavatn on a decent road, before continuing to Reynisvatn which had now disappeared behind the new suburb of Grafarholt. From there they drove past Langavatn and had a view of numerous little lakes on Middalsheidi Moor before slowly proceeding to Mosfellsheidi. They inspected Leirvogsvatn beside the road to Thingvellir, followed by Stíflisdalsvatn and Mjóavatn. It was late by the time they descended to Thingvellir, turned north and passed Sandkluftavatn which lay beside the road north of Hofmannaflöt on the route over the pass at Uxahryggir and down the Lundarreykjadalur valley. They picnicked beside Litla-Brunnavatn, just off the road to Biskupsbrekka.
Erlendur spread out the blanket and they stretched their legs and tucked into the sandwiches from the kiosk. He took out some chocolate biscuits and poured them two cups of coffee, then gazed across the treeless landscape to Thingvellir and Hofmannaflöt beneath Mount Ármannsfell, where people in the Middle Ages used to entertain themselves with horse fights. He had visited various second-hand bookshops in search of the lake book that Davíd might conceivably have been intending to buy. The only one that seemed to fit the bill had been published just before Davíd had gone missing and was called simply Lakes in the Reykjavík Area. It was a handsome volume, lavishly illustrated with photographs of lakes and their surroundings, taken in different seasons. Eva Lind leafed through the book, studying the pictures.
‘If you think she fell in one of these lakes then all I can say is good luck finding her,’ she remarked, sipping her coffee.
Erlendur had told her about Gudrún, or Dúna, who had disappeared thirty years ago without anyone knowing exactly when. He told her about Gudrún’s fascination with lakes and said that he did not think it was completely far-fetched to link her disappearance to another missing-person case, that of a young man called Davíd. Eva Lind was intrigued by the idea that Davíd might have met the girl shortly before he vanished. Erlendur imagined that the book might have been intended for Gudrún. She and Davíd would only just have met at that point, so recently that no one except Davíd’s friend Gilbert would have had any inkling of it. Information about their budding relationship had not emerged until many years later when Gilbert moved home to Iceland from Denmark.
Eva Lind found her father’s theory rather implausible and said as much. Erlendur nodded but pointed out that the one important detail that these two cases had in common was that there was so little information to go on. Nothing was known about Davíd’s disappearance. And all that was known about Gudrún was that her car had vanished with her and had never been found.