Emergency measures were put in place. The town was divided into thirteen districts, medical students were given temporary licences to practise, and house-to-house visits were organised to help those in need. The situation was desperate. People died in their beds a few days after being infected. Children were found standing alone over their parents’ bodies. Others lay gravely ill, unable to move.
Although Flóvent’s father had lost his wife and young daughter, or perhaps because of this, he did his bit for the relief effort. Once he had nursed his son through the flu, he worked day and night to support the doctors and nurses, accompanied all the while by church bells ringing the death knells of loved ones and the echo of weeping, carried from house to house by the bitter wind.
‘God bless them,’ his father said again, his eyes resting on his son. ‘God bless them and keep them, now and for ever.’
20
Konrád pulled up in front of an imposing detached house in the west end. It consisted of two storeys and a basement flat and had been built shortly after the war when the prosperity brought by the changing times had started to make its presence felt. It was clad in pebble-dash, like so many buildings of that era, and had a large back garden, bordered with tall rowan trees and a handsome sycamore.
Ingiborg had given him directions over the phone. The house belonged to her son, she told him, and she lived in a small flat in the basement that he had fitted out especially for her. She was alone there at the moment because her son had taken his family to Europe on holiday. She hadn’t felt up to going with them; she was too old and tired for travelling.
She greeted him at the door and invited him in, explaining that she’d been listening to an audiobook as these days it was difficult for her to read. She indicated the large reading lamp on the kitchen table with a magnifying glass and newspaper lying beneath it. Her hair was white and she moved slowly with the aid of a stick, stooping slightly as she walked. There was a Zimmer frame in the hall. When she asked if he’d like a coffee, he accepted gratefully. It was stiflingly hot in the flat. The sitting-room window looked out over the garden.
‘I was so astonished when you rang,’ she said. ‘When you said you were with the police. I haven’t received a visit from the police since I was young, and that was in connection with the very same case you were asking about. The strangled girl.’
‘It can’t have been much fun for you, being caught up in an inquiry like that.’
‘The worst part was stumbling on the poor girl’s body. That was an unpleasant experience, believe you me.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘I did completely the wrong thing: ran away like an idiot, let myself be taken in. But I learnt my lesson. You have to learn from your mistakes or what would be the point of them?’
Ingiborg put down her stick to free up her hands for the coffee jug.
‘Can I help you at all?’ asked Konrád.
‘No, thank you,’ said Ingiborg. ‘I can still make coffee.’
Konrád was careful not to charge straight in and took his time with the old lady, chatting to her about the weather and politics and her favourite TV programmes. Ingiborg said she watched a great deal of television; she was particularly fond of daytime soaps. She struck him as talkative and sunny by nature, well informed about current affairs and pleased to receive a visitor who showed an interest in everything she had to say. Nevertheless, he sensed an underlying tension and wariness. Her past was catching up with her, and she was understandably cautious. When he spoke to her on the phone it had quickly become apparent that she was indeed the girl referred to in the newspaper article, the civil servant’s daughter who had found the body by the theatre.
‘Do you remember it well?’ asked Konrád, when he had finished his first cup of coffee and she was urging him to have a second.
‘I’ve never been able to go to a play at the National without thinking about it,’ Ingiborg said. ‘For as long as I live I’ll never forget the moment we found her. Of course that sort of thing stays with you always. The way she was lying on the ground with her eyes open. The biting cold. But what’s prompted you to ask about her now, after all these years?’
‘As I mentioned on the phone, I’m looking into the case in connection with a recent murder,’ said Konrád. ‘You may have read about it in the papers, about a man a little older than yourself who was found dead in his home.’
‘Yes, that sounds familiar.’
‘When we examined his flat it turned out he’d kept some old newspaper cuttings about the murdered girl, and he seems to have been looking for information about her just before he died. I wanted to know why. Your name cropped up in an old police report—’
‘I’m sure it did.’
‘Do you know if they ever solved the case?’ Konrád asked. ‘If they ever caught her killer?’
‘I’d have thought you would know that.’
‘Unfortunately there’s nothing in our archives. We can hardly find a scrap of paper relating to the case. It’s as if it never went to court.’
‘No, I didn’t ever try to find out what happened. Shortly afterwards, only a few weeks later, I was... I moved to another part of the country and stayed away for a couple of years. Then I came home and got engaged to my husband.’
Ingiborg smiled at Konrád. She had been thrown by his phone call, having never expected to hear Rósamunda’s name again. Konrád had been very polite, though, and his manner had reminded her of those other policemen, Flóvent and Thorson, who had come round to her house long ago and been so kind and understanding once their initial suspicions had been allayed. She only hoped he wouldn’t expect her to go into details, or she would be forced to reveal to him, a complete stranger, why her father Ísleifur had taken the decision to pack her off to the countryside after her relationship with Frank Ruddy. No amount of persuasion, tears or curses had succeeded in changing his mind. Even her mother had been powerless in the face of his tyranny. He had got it into his head that she would recover best with her relatives in the East Fjords, and that it would minimise the gossip if she simply vanished. His brother was a wealthy farmer out east, so although it was in the middle of nowhere, she would at least be tolerably comfortable. By the time she came back to Reykjavík the occupation was over and most of the soldiers had left. Her father, who had acted in the belief that he was averting disaster, made it up to her by introducing her to a highly promising young man who had worked with him on the independence celebrations. The young man in question had influential backers within the civil service who had secured him a valuable import licence and access to credit, and his wholesale business in American goods was really starting to take off. ‘A secure future,’ her father had said. ‘At least consider it, dear.’
‘He built this house,’ Ingiborg told Konrád. ‘My husband. He died several years ago. He was a wholesaler.’
‘It’s quite a house,’ said Konrád, for the sake of saying something.
‘Yes, far too big for the three of us to rattle around in. My husband and I only had the one child. My son takes very good care of me down here, so I really can’t complain. I lack for nothing. Never have lacked for any of the things that are supposed to matter in life.’
Konrád sensed a certain underlying bitterness, as if her words held a deeper, quite different meaning. He wondered how happy her life had actually been since that fateful day when she chanced upon the body.