‘I don’t know if it’s possible to prosecute people for assisting suicide or deliberately pushing someone into taking their own life,’ Erlendur said. ‘Which is what you and Karólína did. Systematically and without hesitation. The money probably came into it. It’s a lot of cash and you’re in dire straits financially. And then there’s Karólína, of course. You’d get everything you wanted if only María would hurry up and die.’
‘What kind of talk is that?’
‘It’s a hard world.’
‘You can’t prove anything,’ Baldvin said. ‘It’s rubbish!’
‘Tell me what happened. When did it start?’
Baldvin still vacillated.
‘Actually, I think I know more or less what happened,’ Erlendur said. ‘If it wasn’t the way I think, then we can discuss that. But you’ll have to talk to me. I’m afraid there’s no alternative.’
Baldvin stood silent and unmoving.
‘When did it start?’ Erlendur repeated, taking out his mobile phone. ‘Either tell me now or else this place will be crawling with police officers before you know it.’
‘María said she wanted to cross over,’ Baldvin said in a low voice.
‘Cross over?’
‘After Leonóra died,’ Baldvin explained. ‘María wanted to cross over the great divide to where she thought she could reach her mother. She asked me to help her. That was all.’
‘The great divide?’
‘Do I have to spell it out?’
‘And what?’
‘Come inside,’ Baldvin said. ‘I’ll tell you about María if you’ll leave us in peace afterwards.’
‘Were you at the cottage when she died?’
‘Relax,’ Baldvin said. ‘I’ll tell you how it was. It’s time you heard. I’m not going to try to deny any responsibility. We weren’t honest with her but I didn’t kill her. I could never have done that. Never. You have to believe that.’
33
They entered the cottage and sat down in the kitchen. It was cold inside. Baldvin didn’t bother to turn up the radiators; he wasn’t intending to spin this out. He began to tell his story, methodically, point by point, in a clear voice, describing how he met María at university, their cohabitation with Leonóra in Grafarvogur and the last two years of María’s life following the death of her mother. Erlendur thought the story sounded a little rehearsed at times but in other respects Baldvin’s account seemed both plausible and consistent.
Baldvin’s affair with Karólína had been going on for several years. They had briefly gone out together when they’d been at drama school but their relationship had come to nothing. Baldvin married María, Karólína lived either with boyfriends or alone. Her longest relationship lasted four years. Then she and Baldvin met again and revived their old association that María had never known about. They met in secret, not regularly but never less than once a month. Neither wanted to take the affair any further until, shortly before Leonóra was diagnosed with cancer, Karólína began to say that maybe Baldvin should leave María so that they could live together. He wasn’t averse to the idea. Living with his mother-in-law had put a strain on his marriage. Increasingly he had started to point out to María that he had not married her mother and nor did he wish to.
When Leonóra fell ill, it was as if the ground had been snatched from under María’s feet. It transformed her life just as much as it did Leonóra’s. She would not leave the patient’s side. Baldvin moved into the spare room while María slept beside her dying mother. She gave up work completely, cut off almost all contact with friends and became isolated in the home. Then one day a building contractor got in touch with them. He had discovered that Leonóra and María were the joint owners of a small plot of land in Kópavogur and wanted to buy it from them. The area was up and coming and the price of land there had rocketed. While they had known of the existence of this property, it had never crossed their minds that it would bring them any wealth and they had almost forgotten about it by the time the constructor made them the offer. The amount he wanted to pay for it was astronomical. Baldvin had never seen such figures in writing before. María did not turn a hair. She had hardly ever taken any interest in mundane matters and now all she cared about was her mother. She let Baldvin see to the sale. He contacted a lawyer who helped them agree on a price and payment schedule, stamp documents and register the sale. All of a sudden they were rich beyond Baldvin’s wildest dreams.
María became increasingly isolated as her mother’s health deteriorated, and during Leonóra’s final days she did not leave her room. Leonóra wanted to die at home. Her doctor paid regular visits to check on her morphine supply but no one else was allowed in to see her. Baldvin was sitting alone in the kitchen when Leonóra departed from this life. He heard María’s wail of grief from the bedroom and knew that it was all over.
María was incapable of social contact for weeks afterwards. She told Baldvin what had passed between them just before her mother died. They had agreed that Leonóra would give her a sign if what they called the afterlife existed.
‘So she told you about Proust?’ Erlendur interrupted.
Baldvin took a deep breath.
‘She was in a very agitated state, on sedatives and antidepressants, so she forgot about it immediately afterwards,’ he said. ‘I’m not proud of all the things I did – some of them were downright sordid, I know that, but what’s done can’t be undone.’
‘It started with Proust, did it?’
‘In Search of Lost Time,’ Baldvin confirmed. ‘Fitting title. It was always as if they were harking back to a lost time. I never understood it.’
‘What did you do?’
‘I took the first volume off the bookshelf one night last summer and left it on the floor.’
‘So you and Karólína had started laying traps for her?’
‘Yes,’ Baldvin said quietly. ‘It had started by then.’
He had not pulled the curtains and the cottage was cold and dark inside. Erlendur glanced into the living room where María’s life had ended.
‘Was it Karólína’s idea?’ he asked.
‘She began to wonder about the possibilities this might open up. She wanted to go much further than I did. I felt… I was prepared to help María if she wanted to explore these issues: the afterlife, life after death, to find out if there was anything on the other side. She had talked about it often enough, to me and, of course, most of all to Leonóra. She took great solace in the thought of an afterlife. She took solace in the idea that our existence here on Earth was not the end of everything. She preferred the idea that it was the beginning of something. She read books. Spent hours on the Internet. Researched the whole subject very thoroughly.’
‘So you didn’t want to go all the way, then?’
‘No, definitely not. And I didn’t.’
‘But you both exploited María’s vulnerability?’
‘It was a dirty trick, I know,’ Baldvin said. ‘I felt bad about it the whole time.’
‘But not bad enough to stop?’
‘I don’t know what I was thinking of. Karólína was on my back. She made all sorts of threats. Finally I agreed to try it. I was curious, too. What if María regained consciousness with memories of visions from the other side? What if all this talk of an afterlife was true?’
‘And what if you didn’t resuscitate her?’ Erlendur said. ‘Wasn’t that the main issue for you? The money?’
‘That too,’ Baldvin admitted. ‘It’s a strange feeling, having someone’s life in your hands. You’d know that if you were a doctor. It’s a strangely powerful feeling.’
One night Baldvin tiptoed into the living room, went to the bookcase, located Swann’s Way by Proust and placed it carefully on the floor. María was sleeping in their bed. He had given her a slightly larger dose of sleeping pills than normal. He also gave her other drugs that she knew nothing about, psychedelic drugs with disorientating properties. María trusted him to administer the drugs. He was her husband. And moreover a doctor.