‘She doesn’t refuse her medication.’ The nurse had followed Freyr out. ‘I think it’ll all work out. As long as she doesn’t have a serious attack. Of course, we can’t monitor her twenty-four hours a day, but we do look in on her and sit with her as much as we can. We’d feel better if there were a night shift here, but as long as she takes her sleeping pills before bed we can manage without it.’
Freyr nodded. In Ísafjörður there was no communal residence where the woman could live and the nursing home was the only appropriate place for her. Its staff also looked after home care in Ísafjörður and its neighbouring towns, so they had enough on their plates even before taking on a woman who had spent so many years in a psychiatric ward. He knew these regional transfers were a significant factor in his being hired by the Regional Hospital; there was no psychiatrist in Ísafjörður or in this region of the country and it was difficult for general practitioners to provide the woman and others like her with the proper care. Upon coming to Ísafjörður, Freyr had been assigned the task of holding a course for the few staff members of the nursing home on the care of the mentally ill, and although it wasn’t as good as a specialized training course of several years’ duration, it had proved useful. This wasn’t necessarily all down to him, either – the staff had worked hard and shown a great deal of interest in what he’d had to say.
After specifying what time he would come the next day and saying goodbye, Freyr went out to his car. Before getting in, he looked up at the building and saw Úrsúla’s face in the window where she always sat. It was devoid of any emotion. She stared at him, following his every move. Freyr halted, surprised, and they caught each other’s eye. He raised his eyebrows when she opened her mouth and started speaking to him through the double glazing. The fact that he couldn’t hear her didn’t appear to stop the woman; she was still absorbed in her monologue when he looked away and got into his car. Until now Úrsúla had always been almost silent in his presence, communicating only in very short sentences, and certainly never making speeches such as the one he’d just witnessed. He couldn’t work out what had prompted it, but knew from previous experience that a variation in behaviour wasn’t a good sign. It could indicate that she was starting to go downhill. As he left the car park he called the nurse to express his concern to her and ask that they keep an eye on her. He didn’t want these conscientious staff to end up in a situation like the one when Úrsúla had lost the hearing in one ear after sticking a knitting needle into it. This had occurred several years ago and Freyr had only read about it in reports, but that was enough. She had wanted to silence a voice in her ear which was threatening her, a voice that was entirely imaginary and could therefore just as easily have started plaguing her from her belly or her toes. An attempt to silence it in one of those parts of her anatomy would have been even bloodier. In any case, they had every reason to remain alert.
Freyr’s next visit was also for monitoring purposes. He’d been asked to look in on the husband of the woman who had killed herself in Súðavík. The man’s local GP had contacted Freyr the previous evening and expressed concerns about his condition, saying that he was grateful to be able to turn to a specialist who had more experience with psychological problems than he himself did. Freyr had made several of these house calls in the south, treating people who were having difficulty coping with bereavement, although he’d encountered no suicides since moving west. So he knew what to expect, as well as the most appropriate ways to assist the grieving and bewildered spouse. According to information from the hospital, the woman had never been diagnosed with depression or any other serious disease, nor shown any signs of mental disturbance. In other words, there was nothing obvious to explain her last, desperate act. In cases like these, family members would usually start by saying that they had noticed no changes in the deceased’s behaviour, and that the suicide had hit them like lightning out of a clear blue sky. But more often than not the truth would turn out to be a different story: the person who’d chosen to put an end to their life had in fact gradually sunk so low that death had been welcome. Because this process could develop slowly, family members didn’t notice the decline or simply didn’t recognize the warning bells that rang with increasing intensity.
There was no traffic in the tunnel and Freyr allowed himself to drive faster than normal. He was well aware that the structure was safe and the mountain wasn’t about to flatten him, yet he was always glad to see the opening on the other side. The lighting wasn’t strong enough to overcome the night-blindness that always hit him when he drove into the tunnel in daylight. He had never got used to the light on this six-kilometre long journey, but thought it more likely that his discomfort had a psychological rather than a physical origin. The thought of being in a place where man was not originally intended to travel aroused in him a primitive fear that he couldn’t handle. But this time it wasn’t the thickness of the rock above him or the unnatural light that bothered him.
The image of Úrsúla speaking silently to him through the window troubled him, as well as the nagging feeling that he had failed, that he should have postponed his trip to the widower in Flateyri, turned round in the car park and gone back in to hear what she wanted to tell him. He had no idea what that might possibly be, but it increased his curiosity and regret at failing to investigate the matter while he’d had the opportunity. He would probably never know what she had on her mind. A ridiculous idea nestled deep in his brain: that the woman had meant to tell him something concerning his son. But he was well aware that she couldn’t possibly know a single thing about his situation, and that this feeling was most likely a result of the phone call from his ex-wife, which was still bothering him.
The tunnel finally came to an end and as soon as Freyr was no longer surrounded by the silent rock he felt relieved. His thoughts about what Úrsúla had muttered through the glass took on a more sensible air. It would have changed nothing if he had gone back up to her; she would probably have withdrawn into her shell as soon as he appeared at her bedside again. The GPS tracker beeped cheerfully as it came back into contact with its satellites, and began directing him to the widower’s home in a sparsely populated village jutting out into the sea beneath the slopes of Eyrarfjall Mountain.
Huge avalanche barriers stretched up along the slope, silently recalling the horror of the time, fifteen years ago, when the houses and their sleeping residents had been swept away. There was an unusually small amount of snow on the slopes, and the dark barriers could be seen clearly beneath the thin dusting. Freyr let his eyes wander up along them. Maybe the woman, who was called Halla, had lost someone she cared about in the avalanche and never recovered afterwards. Many people took these shocks very badly; it was unbearable to be constantly reminded of such a loss. He knew that more than anyone.