‘Maybe you could tell me how you came up with the idea that I knew the woman.’ Freyr had had enough training in reading people to be well aware that Dagný had deliberately omitted this detail.
A clattering in the corridor gave her a moment to think. Food trolleys were being pushed to the wards for dinner. The rattling of the dishes and crockery momentarily overwhelmed everything else but then quickly faded into silence. ‘Could she have taken part in the search for your son? Were searches conducted in Flateyri or Ísafjörður?’
Freyr suddenly found his office intolerably hot. He loosened the knot in his tie and undid the top button on his shirt. ‘The answer to your second question is no. The search wasn’t countrywide, although the public was asked to stay on the lookout for Benni and photos of him circulated in the media. I don’t know the names of all the people who searched in Reykjavík, but I don’t think Halla can have been among them. Police and rescue teams handled the search; she wasn’t a policewoman, and I doubt she’d have belonged to a rescue team because of her age.’ Before he had a chance to ask what had prompted her to make such an enquiry, Dagný turned to her next question, which was equally incomprehensible.
‘Does the name Bernódus ring any bells?’
‘No.’ Freyr’s fingers were itching to get to the contents of the box. Judging by Dagný’s questions, they were obviously quite remarkable. ‘I’d remember it. It’s an unusual name.’
Dagný nodded; apparently she’d been expecting a different answer. ‘I understand.’
Freyr laid his hands on top of the box, smiled at Dagný and said, ‘Well, I can’t say the same. I can’t make head or tail of what you’re getting at.’
‘Open the box and have a look at what’s in it. As I said, it appears to me that the old and the new break-ins – and Halla’s suicide – are connected.’ She hesitated before continuing, now in a voice so low that it was nearly a whisper. Yet she was reluctant to look him in the eye. ‘As well as the disappearance of your son.’
Freyr’s jaw dropped in astonishment, but no sound emerged from his throat. He seemed to have lost the ability to breathe. But he recovered quickly. ‘That can’t be right.’ He could hear that his voice sounded anything but friendly, contrary to how he had tried to train it for his job. ‘How did you work that out?’
‘As I said, it’s best if you take a look for yourself.’ She stood up and removed her jacket from the back of the chair. ‘Maybe come and talk to me after you’ve formed an opinion. I’m sorry if this seems ridiculous, but it can’t be helped.’ He stared at her as she went to the door. After opening it she turned back. ‘I should mention that I didn’t know it was your son in that photo when I asked about it before. I hope you don’t think I’ve been trying to pry. It’s not like that at all.’ She shut the door behind her without giving him time to reply or say goodbye. The room’s temperature still seemed to be climbing and Freyr took off his tie. He tossed it over the desk, onto the chair where Dagný had been sitting. Then he removed his white coat and did the same with that. The garment landed where he’d aimed it, but then slipped down the back of the chair onto the floor.
Around half an hour later, Freyr had finished going through the evidence. He had settled for skimming over the bulk of the data, which was enough to allow him to understand why Dagný thought she’d found a connection between the two break-ins, as well as to Halla. Black and white photocopies of photographs taken after the earlier break-in were eerily similar to the scene at the preschool. The images were relatively unclear, but the main similarities could be made out. In comparison with the vast number of photos that Dagný had taken of the damage while he was present, the old photos were incredibly few. Of course he might only have got to see some of them, but he suspected that the small number was indicative of how expensive it was to develop film all those years ago. The most striking photo was of the graffiti on the wall of the school’s assembly hall. Dagný had included an equivalent photograph taken at the preschool. Freyr knew that the same word had been scribbled on both walls, so he wasn’t surprised by that. What he was taken aback by was how similar the graffiti was. Disregarding the different backgrounds in the photos, it was almost as if the writing were the same. He would have liked to have enlarged both images and viewed the words in higher resolution side by side, but that was impossible, at least right now. Maybe Dagný could help him with that later.
The two break-ins had other things in common; in neither case had the police managed to determine how the vandal had got in. All the windows were fastened from the inside and all the panes were undamaged, in addition to the fact that no door appeared to have been forced open. In the older case, the police had checked on who had master keys to the school and subsequently concluded that none of those people was connected to the break-in; nor had any keys been lost or passed around. The police report on the break-in at the preschool described a very similar situation: it seemed almost impossible that keys had been used to get in. It was thus unclear as to how access had been gained to either the primary school in 1953 or the preschool now. Freyr had neither the imagination nor the expertise to enable him to speculate about this.
Other elements gave him pause for thought; for instance, a photocopy of an old class photo, which, according to the files, might possibly shed light on who was responsible for the first break-in. The reason for this was stated, but in any case it was obvious: the faces of several of the children had been obliterated by repeated jabs with a sharp object. The frame’s glass had been broken out and the photo hung back up in its place in the group’s classroom after it had been vandalized. No other class photo had received the same treatment; they’d merely been thrown into a corner like old rubbish. It therefore seemed likely that the perpetrator had something against the children in the photo. Freyr couldn’t see from the case files whether this theory had led to anything, and given the ages of the children in the photo, all of them appearing to be between eleven and twelve years old, that was perhaps understandable. It was difficult to imagine that such young kids could prompt anyone to do such a thing. On the other hand, Freyr knew that children this age could be quite brutal with their peers, although victims of childish nastiness seldom resorted to vandalism such as had been wreaked on the school.
At the bottom of the photograph were the names of the children in the class, but it was impossible for Freyr to make them out on the blurry photocopy. However, among the files he’d found a list of the six children who had provoked the vandal’s strongest ire and was surprised to see Halla’s name among them. Next to the names, their dates of death had been written in, according to what was written next to Halla’s name. Nothing was written next to one of the names, Lárus Helgason, so Freyr assumed that he was still alive. The five whom he knew or presumed to be dead – Halla, two men, and two other women – all seemed to have passed away before their time during the past three years, if Freyr were correct in his assessment. He wasn’t familiar with any of them apart from Halla. He wasn’t quite sure what this ought to tell him, but it was clearly unusual, statistically speaking, how this group had all perished within such a short period of time – apart from the one still living. Of course, such a thing wasn’t entirely unlikely; these people had been between sixty and seventy years of age when they’d died, so the fact of their death was not a huge surprise. But still. It would be interesting to learn how each of them had died. If it were a case of multiple suicide it would certainly be worthy of investigation, since such a thing was nearly unheard of except when it involved teenagers.