Friday night, 2 November
The temperature had dropped below freezing.
Helgi stood on the steps to the basement, gazing up at the sky, at the stars, or at least those that were visible in spite of the light pollution. He had pulled on his coat and trousers. It was past three in the morning, and he hadn’t been able to sleep. Sometimes, when work was hectic, when his head was spinning all day, the night brought only a short-lived peace.
But the night also had an indefinable beauty. He felt as though he were alone in the world, and he savoured the feeling precisely because he knew it wasn’t true. That knowledge made all the difference. In the warmth indoors was Aníta, the girl who had saved his life, who had offered him the security he needed when he finally managed to break his ties with Bergthóra.
He was so precariously close to being alone in the world. His mother lived nearly 400 kilometres away andwas old and unwell; his father was dead; and he had no brothers or sisters, and no children. His friends were few and scattered. He couldn’t bear the idea of having to face life alone. Perhaps that was the reason why it had taken him so long to leave the woman who had done her best to wreck his life.
No wonder he sought solace in his books. They meant so much to him. In a fire, he would rescue Aníta first, of course, and then his books. Sometimes he wondered what would happen to them all after he was gone. Would anyone ever care about them the way he did? Did it even matter what became of them when he was no longer around? He found these thoughts so distressing that he tried not to brood on them. Mortality was such a devastating idea that at times he felt there wasn’t enough oxygen in the world for him to be able to breathe through it.
Bergthóra’s violence had only gradually become apparent.
Good things come to those who wait, his father used to say. Helgi hadn’t realized that the same could apply to bad things.
She had shoved him one day in the kitchen. He had lost his balance and bashed into a cupboard, which left him with a large bruise on his side. He could still picture the scene: two empty wine bottles on the table, of which she had drunk the lion’s share, as usual.Are you crazy? You don’t think I pushed you deliberately?That’s how it had started. It was all in his head, and she was the victim. Everything twisted around, because she knew how to manipulate the truth. She had done this sort of thing before, he wassure of it, though he hadn’t met her ex-boyfriend to ask him. Besides, Helgi would never talk about what had happened. He knew that, and so did Bergthóra. She had found the perfect hiding place in shame – his shame, not hers – and, slowly but surely, she had upped the stakes.
Good things come to those who wait.
In the end, after many other incidents of this kind, she hadn’t been able to deny it any longer.
Yes, but so what? I hardly even touched you. And you’ve done the same yourself.
Only he never had, but that didn’t seem to matter. She had controlled the conversation, lying when necessary, denying things whenever she could.
How could she have turned love – if it ever was love? – into such searing, vicious hatred, and why had he let her get away with it?
Not even here, in the cold, under the stars that preserved the light of ages past, in the night that concealed so many secrets, could he acknowledge his innocence to himself. Instead, he felt that, deep down, he must bear some responsibility for the situation.
Again, his thoughts turned to Aníta.
She was the one who had saved him from the abyss, from his isolation, from sitting alone in the basement flat of the old, red, corrugated-iron-clad house, surrounded by books…
nothing but books…
unable to breathe.
SATURDAY
2012
Saturday, 3 November
Helgi’s detective novels had set their stamp on his office at the police station, the office that used to belong to Hulda.
He had even brought a small bookcase down from Akureyri and filled it with some of his favourite titles.
A few colleagues had remarked that his office had begun to resemble a library, but he chose to take this as praise. After all, it was probably the effect he had been aiming for. Now he could stay on later in the evening than he would have done otherwise, poring over complicated case files, and occasionally pick up a novel to help him switch off for a while.
He had come in on Saturday morning, bringing the next book from his pile to read during his breaks, if he had time. He’d started it several years ago and now meant to carry on from where he’d left off.
Cicely Disappears, the book was called, by Anthony Berkeley. A lovely first edition, acquired somehow by hislate father, with an attractive 1920s cover. He was rather enjoying the story, which involved a séance plunged into pitch darkness, and, when the lights came on, the discovery that a girl called Cicely had vanished. Helgi recalled reading that when the story was first serialized, the newspaper it appeared in had held a competition inviting readers to have a go at solving the mystery. Agatha Christie was rumoured to have taken part, unsuccessfully. In fact, none of those who responded had guessed the correct solution.
And now a famous Icelandic author had vanished.
Day three of the investigation had begun.
Helgi sighed.
