‘I don’t sleep much — because of the waves, you see. So I wander around, and wait for them. See my eyes? See them?’ Petrína craned her head forward to show Elínborg her bloodshot eyes. ‘It’s the waves. That’s what they do to my eyes. Those bloody waves. And I have a headache all the time.’
‘Don’t you think that might be the cigarettes?’ Elínborg asked politely.
‘So I sat by the window here, and waited for them,’ said Petrína, ignoring Elínborg’s comment. ‘I sat and waited all night, and all day Sunday, and I’m still waiting.’
‘For?’
‘For the men from the power company! I thought that was who you were.’
‘So you sat here at the window, watching the street. Did you think they would come at night?’
‘How should I know when they’ll come? And then I saw that man I told you about this morning. I thought maybe he was from them, but he walked straight past. I thought of shouting out to him.’
‘Had you ever seen him around here before?’
‘No, never.’
‘Could you tell me a bit more about him?’
‘There’s nothing to tell. Why are you asking about him?’
‘A crime was committed near here, and I may have to trace him.’
‘You can’t,’ asserted Petrína.
‘Why not?’
‘You don’t know who he is,’ observed Petrína, amazed that Elínborg could be so dense.
‘No, and that’s why I’m asking you to help me. You said this morning he was wearing a dark jacket and a cap. Was it a leather jacket?’
‘I’ve no idea. But he had a hat on. A knitted woolly hat.’
‘Did you notice his trousers?’
‘Nothing special. They were those ones for running, with the legs torn up to the knee. There was nothing special about them.’
‘Was he driving a car?’
‘No. I didn’t see a car.’
‘Was he alone?’
‘Yes, he was alone. I only saw him for a moment because he moved fast, despite being lame.’
‘Lame?’ asked Elínborg. She did not recall hearing anything about this from the officer who had interviewed Petrína.
‘Yes, lame. Poor man. He had an aerial thing around his leg.’
‘Did he seem to be in a hurry?’
‘Oh, yes, but everybody hurries past here. It’s the waves. He wouldn’t want to let the waves get into his leg.’
‘What kind of aerial was it?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Did he limp heavily?’
‘Yes.’
‘And he didn’t want the waves in his leg? What do you mean?’
‘That was why he limped. The waves were massive. Really massive waves in his leg.’
‘Could you feel the waves?’
Petrína nodded. ‘Who did you say you were?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t you from the power company? Do you know what I think it is? Do you want to know? It’s all because of this uranium. Massive uranium, that comes down with the rain.’
Elínborg smiled. She should have listened to the policemen who had said it probably wasn’t worth talking to this witness again. She thanked Petrína, and promised to telephone the power company to remind them about the electromagnetic waves which were making her life so difficult — though she doubted whether they would be the right people to help the poor lady with her headaches.
There were no other witnesses to speak of. One middle-aged man came forward, who had been walking through Thingholt that Saturday night to his home on Njardargata. Though in the throes of a severe hangover, he wanted to state, while it was still fresh in his memory, that on the way home he had seen a woman sitting alone in a parked car. She was in the passenger seat, and it seemed to him that she had been trying to avoid attracting attention. He had no further explanation to offer. He gave them the name of the street where he had seen the car, which was some distance from the crime scene, but could give no proper description of the woman who he thought was probably about sixty and had been wearing a coat. He had no more to tell them. He remembered nothing about the car: neither its colour nor its make. He did not know much about cars, he explained.
5
The flight was short, and the humming of the propellers was soothing. Elínborg sat in a window seat as she invariably did on domestic flights. She enjoyed seeing something of the country but this afternoon the weather was cloudy and she caught only glimpses of mountain or valley, or a river meandering across the snowy landscape. As she grew older, she was becoming increasingly afraid of air travel, although she could not explain her phobia. In the past she had never seen a flight as any more risky than a drive. But over the years she had developed a fear of flying which she attributed to having children and acquiring responsibilities in life. Generally she found it easier to cope with a short domestic flight than an international journey, although there were exceptions to the rule. She remembered one hazardous midwinter flight in stormy weather, swooping between the mountains and down into the narrow fjord of Ísafjördur: she had felt as if she were in a horror film that would culminate in a terrifying crash. She thought her time had come and clenched her eyes shut, praying until the undercarriage wheels touched down safely on the icy runway. Complete strangers had hugged each other in relief. On long international flights Elínborg took care to choose an aisle seat and tried not to worry about exactly how the heavy aircraft managed to take to the air and stay aloft, laden with passengers and their luggage.
The local police met her at the little airport and drove to the village where Runólfur’s mother lived. A dusting of snow highlighted the rich autumnal hues of the vegetation. Elínborg sat silently in the police car’s back seat, unable to focus on the beautiful natural scenery around her. She was thinking about her son Valthór. A month ago she had discovered by chance that he was blogging on the Internet, and now she had a guilty conscience about the boy. She did not know what to do.
Elínborg had been picking up clothes from the floor of his room when she saw on the computer screen that he had been writing about himself and his family. She jumped when she heard him approach and when they met in the doorway she pretended nothing was wrong. But she had made a mental note of the Internet thread, and after a slight tussle with her conscience she had keyed it into the family computer in the TV den. It felt like reading her son’s private correspondence, until she realised that the content of the blog was open to be read by anyone. When she saw how freely he wrote about himself she broke out into a cold sweat. He had never mentioned to her or to Teddi anything that she read in the blog, or said anything about it at home at all. There were links to other blogs. Elínborg looked through some of them, and saw that Valthór’s candid style was far from unusual. People had no inhibitions about writing about themselves, their family, their deeds, desires, emotions, opinions — anything that came into their minds as they sat at the computer, and with no self-censorship. Anything and everything went up. Elínborg had never taken any particular interest in blogs, except in the context of her work, and she had not imagined that her own children might be involved.
Since first coming across Valthór’s blog, Elínborg had stealthily accessed the site from time to time, read about the music her son listened to, films he had seen, and what he was doing with his friends, about school and what he thought of it and of individual teachers. Everything that Elínborg and he never talked about. He reported her own remarks on a sensitive issue under debate in society; he wrote about his gifted sister and how difficult it was to cater for her — because all the special-needs teaching was directed at the needs of dunces, Valthór stated, quoting his mother.
When she read her own words repeated on the Internet for all to see, Elínborg was furious: the boy had no right to go gossiping about her opinions. Valthór occasionally quoted his father too, but that was mostly on the subject of cars in which they shared an interest. The boy also posted some of his father’s very politically incorrect jokes.