‘He probably never saw these hinges. I didn’t notice them until now, after the mould spread through the wood and uncovered them. They’re all the way up against the wall so they could have been lying partly under the old skirting board. Plus there’s not much light in here, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ Katrín tried to find the outline of the trapdoor, without success. She took the crowbar and tried to stick it between the planks where she thought the end of the trapdoor might be, but nothing happened, so she tried the next ones with the same result; the same went for the two other pairs of remaining planks before the new floor material took over again. She hesitated and realized that there were perhaps other hinges on the side opposite to where she’d been trying and that the end of the trapdoor was on the other side. She shifted awkwardly again to apply the crowbar to that spot.
‘Katrín. Don’t do this. What will you do after you’ve opened it? Stick your head into the hole? It was impossible to determine whether Líf was concerned mainly about Katrín’s head or her own safety if it were cut off. ‘Please. Don’t do this. At least wait until morning.’
It was too late. The floor broke open when Katrín finally found the right spot. She was terribly scared, and what Líf had just said was weighing heavily on her mind. If she let go of the crowbar the hatch would probably drop down through the opening. The latch that held it up, as well as the old hinges, had creaked; all three had probably given under the force. But what then? Was she going to stick her head down there? Hardly. ‘Hand me your camera, Líf. Isn’t there still some life left in its battery?’
‘What?’ Líf stared dumbly at Katrín, but then came to her senses and nodded. She looked around and spied the camera where she’d left it. She grabbed it and walked over to Katrín but before handing it over, she hugged the pink device to her chest as if she had changed her mind, but then changed it back again and extended her hand. ‘Please, be quick about it and then shut that sodding hatch tightly again.’
Katrín took the camera and let go of the crowbar, causing the hatch to fall with a drawn-out creak. She didn’t tell Líf, but there was no way that she could manage to put it back in its place. A cloud of dust nearly suffocated the candle flame. Katrín leaned away from the opening to avoid inhaling it, but found from the dry taste in her mouth that she was too late. She looked at Líf and read everything that needed to be said from her terrified look. If this was a mistake, it was too late to regret it. Putti neither whined nor barked, but looked almost disappointed in her. Katrín turned her eyes away from the two of them and stared at the black hole now gaping before her. She shook herself and turned on the camera, her hand trembling. Then she reached out as far as she dared. She was still trembling uncontrollably when she stuck the hand holding the camera down through the hole, her index finger prepared to snap a photo. In fact, she half expected to lose her hand and so had chosen the left one. When the camera had gone far enough down she pressed the button, the bright flash sending a blaze of light up through the opening as if a bomb had exploded beneath the house. She turned the camera slightly and pressed it again, then turned it around and pressed a third time. Although it was impossible to know how successful she’d been or if she’d managed to capture whatever lay below, she didn’t have the nerve to continue and pulled her arm back up with a speed that she didn’t know she was capable of.
‘Show me the photos!’ Líf held her hands to her chest as if she expected to have a heart attack as soon as Katrín revealed what she’d captured.
Katrín said nothing. She slid herself on her bottom across the floor and away from the opening as she brought up the first photo, and as soon as she felt her back hit the kitchen cabinet she peered at the screen. When her eyes had taken in what appeared to be lying on the dirt floor in one corner of the frame, she swallowed and looked at Líf. ‘They’re bones. Human bones. A dead person in the crawl space beneath our feet.’
Líf grabbed her mouth. ‘Garðar?’ It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since they’d seen him last, but nothing was logical any more in this place.
Katrín didn’t reply, and instead pressed the arrow button she thought would bring up the next photo. Another photo did appear, but instead of it being another shot from the crawl space, she’d gone in the opposite direction and was now viewing the oldest photo on the camera. She looked at it in exhaustion and felt her lower jaw slacken. She pushed the button again and saw the next oldest, then again and again and again until she realized this was no misunderstanding. She looked up and stared at Líf.
‘What? Is it Garðar?’ Líf seemed terrified, but also uncertain, given Katrín’s impenetrable look. ‘Is he dead?’
Katrín didn’t reply immediately, and instead scrambled to her feet. The pain plaguing her foot didn’t touch her; it simply didn’t matter. After standing up she threw the camera at Líf, who caught it in surprise. Katrín suppressed her longing to spit, and made do with hissing: ‘You know what?’ Her voice was as cold as the ice that now enclosed her heart. ‘I really hope he is.’
Chapter 30
Freyr felt as if he’d just shut his eyes when the alarm clock demanded that he open them again. Yet he’d managed to nap for four hours, which wasn’t too bad. The sleeplessness he’d feared hadn’t manifested itself, nor had nightmares stopped his sleep being restful. He’d gone to bed much later than planned and had been absolutely exhausted when he finally laid his head on the pillow. He’d intended to turn in early but the e-mails from Sara – with the files that he’d asked her to send – had started coming in just as he was about to turn off the computer. Maybe she’d hoped to interfere with his sleep that night, and he wouldn’t blame her. She was furious with him and would no doubt stay that way for some time, possibly indefinitely. He would have to live with that, and maybe that was a cleaner separation than a friendship built on sand, or lies. Every e-mail ended with the same line: Fuck you, you fucking bastard, you monster. Fair enough, he thought.
As it so often did, sleep had helped to order Freyr’s thoughts. Once he’d gone through most of what Sara had sent and set it alongside what he had already gleaned, everything felt like it had merged into a mess of confusion. It was impossible for him to draw any conclusions or even discern a coherent thread in the swarm of reports he’d gone through, nor could he find anything useful by fast-forwarding through the CCTV recordings from the petrol station forecourt. This hadn’t particularly surprised him – why should he, all these years later, spot something the investigative team had overlooked? He’d been a fool to think he might. Nonetheless, he’d viewed all the clips diligently, though at high speed; it was like watching a cartoon in which people didn’t walk, but waddled like penguins in a hurry, and cars seemed to appear and disappear at random. But Freyr had no choice; he couldn’t watch four hours of recordings of a garage forecourt at normal speed.
The reports, however, he read word by word. Of the dozens he went through, Freyr set only one aside for further perusal; the others told him nothing new. The one that captured his attention had sparked something indefinable in his mind. It was the testimony of one of the boys who had taken part in the game of hide-and-seek, a boy who Freyr had noticed never looked him in the eye the few times that their paths had crossed after Benni’s disappearance, the one who’d mentioned the submarine. At that point he’d been too burdened by grief to wonder why the child was behaving that way, but now time and distance granted him sharper vision. Freyr didn’t know whether he’d worked through his reading while half awake or asleep, but by the time he’d woken up he’d realized that certain details in the boy’s statement didn’t fit; they weren’t glaring errors, and only the few people closest to the situation could have spotted them, so it was understandable that the police had overlooked the inconsistencies. If that was indeed what had happened; it was perfectly possible that they hadn’t had all the reports to hand, and that further conversations with the boy had shed better light on the case. Either way, Freyr was going to sort this out before the end of the day. How, he didn’t know, but he had enough time to find out.