‘Where to?’ asks the driver once they’re all settled.
‘The harbour at Grundartangi,’ says Methúsalem, who is sitting in the front.
‘Grundartangi,’ the driver echoes and pulls away.
Apart from the caterwauling of some symphony on the car radio, which is tuned to the classical channel, silence reigns in the taxi. The five men sit still and stare out the windows at cars, houses and the lights of the city rushing past. After just a few hours, and then for the next fortnight, the endless ocean will be the only thing they’ll see. They know this; it’s why they’re soaking up everything they see on the way to the harbour. They are collecting simple memories that will eventually be precious to them. Little images to remind them of their homeland and the people who wait there.
As they drive through Mosfellsbær it starts to rain. The odd drop hitting the windscreen to begin with, then the rain building up so that by the time they are on the last roundabout the rhythm of the windscreen wipers has become fast and regular.
‘Look!’ says Methúsalem suddenly, pointing at a man in dark clothes who is walking backwards along the verge, thumb raised in the manner of hitchhikers. ‘Isn’t that the guy from the bar?’
‘The one who was scrounging change?’ Ási asks from the back seat.
‘Yeah,’ answers Methúsalem, getting a momentary look at the soaking-wet man out the side window as the car rushes past him. ‘Maybe we should give him a ride?’
‘What?’ says the driver and slows down.
‘No way,’ says Rúnar, signalling the driver to keep going. ‘He’s just a bloody scrounger. Nothing but trouble.’
‘What was it he said again?’ says Sæli, peering out the back window. ‘Something about a ship. Five men on a ship. What was it?’
‘He’s just a drunk,’ Rúnar mutters, irritated. ‘Let’s forget him!’
‘Yeah, let’s forget him,’ says Methúsalem, peering into the passenger-side mirror, but there is nothing to be seen but the wet roadside, fading into the darkness.
Little by little the lights and houses grow more scarce. By the time they reach the mouth of the Hvalfjörður fjord there is nothing to be seen but the rain-laden night.
‘Take the tunnel, mate,’ says Big John, his great paw clapping the driver on his right shoulder. ‘We’ll pay the toll.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ the driver nods.
From the radio come the soft A-major chords of the lyrical Adagio Cantabile movement of Beethoven’s eighth piano sonata, the Pathétique. The chords dissolve into monotonous static as the car plunges into the deep, dark tunnel under Hvalfjörður.
IV
A black telephone rings. It sits on a crocheted doily on the telephone table in the hall in the home of Jónas Bjarni Jónasson, second mate on the freighter Per se. Jónas lives in a fairly new semi-detached house in the Lendur district in Mosfellsbær. It’s ten to one in the morning and the ring sounds uncomfortably loud in the house. The lights are on in most of the rooms and the curtains carefully drawn over all the windows.
Jónas stands utterly still, wearing only his underpants, and stares at the phone as if hypnotised, as if he is unsure whether the ringing is real or just in his imagination.
Nearly a minute passes before Jónas lays a sticky sledgehammer on the telephone table and picks up the receiver with bloody fingers.
‘Hello?’
‘Jónas, ish ’at you?’ asks a thick-tongued voice in a place where the heavy beat of music must be shaking the walls as it blends with the sound of loud chatter.
‘Who is it?’
‘Ish your brother-in-law, Kalli.’
‘What do you want?’ asks Jónas quietly.
‘Listen! Gonna gimme a lift later on?’
‘No. Can’t you just take a cab?’ says Jónas, looking at himself in the mirror above the telephone, covered with blood from his chest halfway down his calves. Blood that isn’t his. Blood that is turning black and starting to clot.
‘I don’ have enough money,’ says Kalli. ‘Can’t I take a cab to your place an’ just go along with you, eh?’
‘If I’ve already left, just thumb a lift. Okay?’ says Jónas.
‘You in some kinda hurry?’
‘No,’ says Jónas, clearing his throat. ‘But I have to go now.’
‘Where’s my sister?’ Kalli asks cheerfully.
‘She… She’s just lying down,’ says Jónas softly.
‘I get you! Listen, I just—’ But Jónas hangs up before Kalli can finish the sentence.
Jónas picks up the phone again, waits for the dial tone, punches in a number.
‘Hello?’
‘Mum? It’s Jonni,’ he says when his aged mother answers.
‘Jonni dear, is everything all right?’ his mother asks, her voice weak.
‘I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean to wake you,’ says Jónas. He coughs a little. ‘I just wanted to let you know that María won’t be able to fetch the kids tomorrow.’
‘Oh? Why not?’
‘Just… something came up,’ says Jónas, taking a deep breath. ‘She’s going to be away for a few days. A week, even.’
‘A week?’ asks his mother, sounding bewildered. ‘But your father and I are leaving for the Canaries in three days. We can’t…’
‘Mum! I’m about to be late! I haven’t got time for this!’ says Jónas, his voice shaking. ‘I’ll explain it all later. I… can’t…’
Jónas hangs up and pulls the phone cord out of the wall. Then he wipes the sweat off his forehead, smearing blood across his face.
On the floor in the bedroom, Maria’s naked body lies on a tarpaulin. She’s on her back in a sticky puddle of blood, staring empty-eyed at the ceiling.
Jónas pulls off the stained bedding and uses it to hide his wife’s cooling body. There is a bloodstain the size of a dinner plate on her side of the mattress. She had been asleep when he’d struck her in the head with the sledgehammer.
Jónas fetches a clean towel and places it over the bloodstain. Then he wraps the tarp around the body and the bedding and ties it all up with the cords on the tarp that have special loops for tent pegs.
After washing off all the blood in a hot shower, and drying himself carefully from head to toe, Jónas makes up the double bed with clean linen. Then in one bag he collects everything that clearly or just possibly has come into contact with his newly deceased wife’s blood: the hammer, the phone, the doily from the telephone table, the soap from the shower and the towels with which he dried himself. He wets a cloth in hot water and wipes invisible fingerprints and imaginary bloodstains off doorknobs, doorframes, walls and floors, bedside tables and the bedstead. The cloth then follows the hammer and the other stuff into the bag. He ties a knot in the bag, sticks it into another bag and knots it as well. Then he puts on a shirt, trousers and a windcheater before wrestling the body out to his four-wheel drive.
The vehicle is a ten-year-old Jeep Cherokee, white with fog lights on the front and a ski rack on the roof. Jónas backs out of the carport by his house, looking around his peaceful neighbourhood. Not a light to be seen in any window, no people up and about.
Jónas puts the automatic shift into drive and starts slowly down the street. Suddenly he slams on the brakes, goes into reverse and returns to the front of the house. On the rear-view mirror hangs a rosary with a wooden crucifix that swings back and forth.
Did he definitely turn off all the lights?
Yes. It is dark behind the curtains in all the windows. But did he remember to lock the door? What the fuck does it matter! Jónas sighs and drives off again, turns once left and twice right, and then he’s out on the Westland Highway, National Highway Number One.