Page 63 of The Darkness
She began to back away from him. Bjartur didn’t move.
Then she turned and fled into the night.
It didn’t take him long to catch up. When he did, he hurled her to the ground, grabbed a nearby stone and bashed her on the head, knocking her out. Was she dead? Probably not. He thought he could detect a pulse.
Bjartur lifted her up and carted her limp body down to the cove, stumbling once or twice on the rocks in the darkness. Then he laid Elena carefully on her front, with her head in the salt water, and held her down.
XXVII
‘You mean there was nothing in the papers I brought you?’ Hulda asked, her mind working furiously, determined to do everything in her power to keep the conversation going.
Bjartur laughed. ‘Nothing of interest. Obviously, I had to think fast when you mentioned Katja; find some excuse to lure you out of town. I had to get rid of you. There’s no alternative.’
Hulda cursed silently. This had turned into the day from hell. All her mistakes came back to haunt her: Emma’s confession, the man murdered in hospital, Áki’s arrest. She should never have got out of bed. Normally, she told herself, she’d have been far quicker to sense the danger she was in, but worry had blunted her instincts.
‘Please, give me some water,’ Hulda gasped, though it went against the grain to ask this man for anything.
‘Later,’ he said, but she wasn’t sure he meant it.
‘Were they both working as prostitutes?’ she asked.
Bjartur burst out laughing. ‘Of course not. Neither of them was. They were good girls, especially Katja – she was lovely.’
‘But …’ Only now, far too late, did Hulda understand how Bjartur had misled her, set her on the wrong path at the very outset of the investigation.
‘I was so thrown when you appeared on my doorstep,’ he went on. ‘I’d put the whole thing behind me; thought the case was closed ages ago. All I could think was to find some way of deflecting your attention from me. Then I had a brainwave: I’d tell you Elena had been on the game. And it worked pretty well, didn’t it? Had you fooled.’
Hulda blinked, her eyes full of dirt. When they cleared, she saw that Bjartur was smiling, absently.
She could feel the terror clutching at her heart, but she mustn’t let it paralyse her. For a moment, she was a child again, locked in the naughty cupboard by her grandmother.
Closing her eyes briefly, she concentrated on the birdsong. Surely somebody would help her. Even though it was past midnight, there must be someone about. Or perhaps Bjartur would change his mind, perhaps he was only trying to frighten her … Her hopes ebbed away with every second that passed.
‘You won’t get away with this,’ she said at last, but it sounded unconvincing, even to her own ears.
‘I’ve already got away with two murders. I’m getting to be quite an old hand. And I’ll make sure you’re never found. We’re laying the concrete foundation this week.’
‘But …’ Her mind flew to her mobile. It must be possible to track her whereabouts, find out where she’d been, even if it was too late to save her.
Once again, Bjartur seemed to read her mind.
‘I dealt with your phone hours ago. Remember when you lent it to me and I pretended to call my dad? I took out the battery.’
‘There’s still my car.’
‘That’s a bit more of a headache, I grant you, but I’ll dispose of it. Drive it off a cliff into the sea then make my way back to town somehow. Anyway, no one’ll be interested in my movements, since I’ve never been a suspect in this case. Don’t worry, I’ll get away with it.’
He resumed his shovelling.
XXVIII
The advantage of darkness is that there are no shadows.
Hulda closed her eyes.
She decided to stop struggling. Give up the fight.
The suffocating sense of claustrophobia was horrific, indescribable, yet, oddly, she felt a kind of peace descending on her, once she had resigned herself to the inevitable, to the realization that no one was coming to her rescue now, that these were her final moments of life. She would never have to endure the humiliation of being prosecuted for professional misconduct. In the event of her death, Magnús would drop the proceedings against her, she was sure of that. Her thoughts flew to Pétur. He would be waiting for her. Perhaps he had been trying to call her. And he would have to wait for ever.
