‘I’m not your love! I’m going to tell Dad... I’m going to tell him. How you—’
Dagbjört tried to return to the front door but Rasmus blocked her way.
‘You mustn’t.’
‘Get away from me!’ shouted Dagbjört.
‘You mustn’t leave here angry,’ said Rasmus, regarding her gravely. ‘You mustn’t tell anyone. You mustn’t...’
She tried to push him away but he resisted and shoved at her. Dagbjört lost her balance, fell backwards and as she landed her head hit the bottom stair. She was dazed by the blow. Rasmus seized her as she lay there on the floor and started banging her head again and again against the step.
‘You mustn’t leave... mustn’t... mustn’t leave...’
‘I thought surely someone must have seen me when I called her over so I waited in a panic for the police, but nothing happened. Nobody had noticed her come in here. I was asked lots of questions like everyone else in the street but said I didn’t know anything and unfortunately couldn’t help; I’d slept in that morning until lunchtime. When I told the police that they left me alone. I even took part in the search. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Right up until you came to the door and started pestering me with your questions and I couldn’t get rid of you. Came here uninvited, banging on all the doors and windows and insulting me. There’s no other word for it. You insulted me, like those hooligans who cornered me that time.’
Erlendur had been taken by complete surprise when Rasmus stabbed him with the scissors. Unable to defend himself, he had clutched at his belly and sunk to his knees, then toppled to the floor unconscious. When he came to, Rasmus was sitting on the floor beside him, telling him how he had called out to Dagbjört and how their subsequent conversation had led to her death. The scissors had penetrated Erlendur’s abdomen on the right-hand side and he could feel the blood seeping from the wound into his clothes. A searing pain ran up the whole of his side, accompanied by a paralysing weakness. He heard Rasmus talking to him in a soothing voice about his love for the girl and how it had never been his intention to hurt her.
‘Something came over me,’ he heard Rasmus say. ‘Something horrible. I don’t know what it was. Something came over me and I shoved her. Pushed her much too hard. Much too hard, you see. I completely lost control of myself and started banging her head on the stairs. I didn’t want her telling tales about me to her father or those friends of hers. Those sluts. I don’t know what came over me... but... but all of a sudden she was dead... when I came to my senses she was dead in my hands. So I picked her up and took her... I don’t know... I don’t know what to do with you.’
‘You’ve got to help me,’ said Erlendur, feeling his strength waning. ‘I’m bleeding to death. You can help me, Rasmus. And I’ll help you. You’re sick. You need help. Let me—’
‘I don’t need any help,’ said Rasmus. ‘That’s absurd. As if I needed any help. All I need is to be left in peace. That’s all I ask. Is it too much to ask, to be left in peace?’
‘Rasmus...’ Erlendur felt himself losing consciousness again.
‘I’d better check on her. Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. Except here with us. Here with us everything’s just the way it always was. With us nothing’s changed.’
‘Rasmus...’
Erlendur blacked out and Rasmus stroked his head.
‘Wait here, my friend, I need to check on her a moment,’ he said and rose to his feet.
Erlendur didn’t know how much time had passed when he surfaced again, opened his eyes and looked around. It took him a while to work out where he was but finally it came back to him that he was lying wounded on the floor of Rasmus’s house; that he had been stabbed. He had been pressing his hand against the wound, trying as hard as he could to staunch the bleeding, and he kept up the pressure now that he had regained consciousness, clutching his hand to his aching side. Rasmus was nowhere to be seen but he couldn’t be far away. With a great effort Erlendur managed to raise his head, then sit up and prop himself against the wall while he mustered his strength. The bloodstained scissors lay on the floor and he reached out for them, then braced himself against the wall and somehow succeeded in levering himself to his feet.
He listened out for Rasmus but couldn’t hear so much as a cough or a groan anywhere in the house, only his own laboured breathing. He had to get out of here as soon as possible and call for help, but then he remembered that Rasmus had entered the hall from a door that presumably led to the garage. Erlendur wavered until curiosity overcame common sense. Taking a deep breath and clutching the scissors tight, he set off in the direction from which Rasmus had come.
Slowly he hobbled to the door. It was closed but not locked and he opened it cautiously. Inside was a laundry room. There was an old washing machine against one wall. A musty stench of dirty clothes. When he stepped inside, his hair brushed against washing lines fixed to the ceiling. There was a fuse box on one wall, with meters next to it. On the other side of the laundry was another door which stood a little ajar, admitting a strip of light from the garage.
Erlendur limped warily over and peered inside. A dim bulb hung from the ceiling. The floor space was almost entirely occupied by something covered in a thick, white tarpaulin. Erlendur went over and tugged clumsily at the cover, hampered by the scissors, until he managed to pull it off to reveal a classic American automobile that had once, long ago, been reversed into the garage. It was a two-door Chevrolet Deluxe, a 1948 model, bright green, and so lovingly cared for that it looked almost like new. The paintwork was polished, the windows shone, the chrome fittings gleamed and you could see your reflection in the hubcaps. On second glance, there was no air in the tyres and the rubber was cracked and perished, but in all other respects the car was a vision and one would have thought, from its appearance, that it was still in use.
Although gleaming and beautiful on the outside, inside the car was full of dust and dirt that hadn’t been disturbed for many years. Erlendur’s attention was drawn to a shapeless mass on the back seat. It was leaning against the window, covered in a yellowed blanket. He needed two hands to open the door as it was stiff and heavy and the hinges creaked as if it hadn’t been moved for a long time. He tipped the driver’s seat forward and reached into the back. Blood from his wound dripped into the interior as he stretched out his arm, grasped the blanket and jerked at it. He had to tug three times before it came away and fell to the floor of the car, stirring up a cloud of dust. He was confronted by a skeleton in old, rotten clothes. The skull, which was leaning towards him, had dead, dusty tufts of hair down to the shoulders, empty eye sockets and a jaw gaping in silent anguish.
Filled with sadness and horror at the sight, Erlendur failed to notice Rasmus materialise in the doorway behind him. But he heard him — as the other man emitted a screech and pounced on him, gripping him round the neck and trying to tear him out of the car. Finding the scissors still in his hand, Erlendur jabbed them into Rasmus’s thigh. He was rewarded with a cry of pain. Then Rasmus leapt onto his back and tightened his throttling grip until finally Erlendur managed to turn and, with the last of his strength, batter Rasmus against the door frame. He stabbed behind him with the scissors, heard Rasmus scream, and felt the grip on his throat slacken. Rasmus fell off his back, landing half inside the car. Erlendur grabbed his legs, pushed him into the front seat and slammed the door. Rasmus started frantically hammering and kicking at it and Erlendur, exhausted from the struggle, wondered how long he could hold the door against him. Casting round desperately for an implement, he seized a shovel and wedged it firmly between the car door and the wall. Rasmus tried to wind down the window but the handle broke off. He threw himself over at the passenger door but could only open it a crack because the car was parked close to the wall on that side. He rattled it madly like an animal in a cage, then, panicking, banged at the window on the driver’s side with his bare fists, weeping and shouting and hammering until his delicate fingers were bloody, and the realisation finally sank in that he was trapped.