Then again, if she missed the old days so much, why didn’t she simply pick up her pen again?
‘Why did she stop writing?’ he asked.
Rut seemed flustered by his question.
‘What? Why… er… I’m not really the right person to answer that. I mean, she’s said more than once in interviews that the series was always envisioned as being precisely ten books long.’
‘I see. Didn’t she give any other explanation for her decision at the time?’
‘No. It was ten good – no, ten brilliant – books, and it’s generally best to stop while you’re at the top of your game. I respected this approach from a writer like Elín, though I won’t deny that it would have suited me better as a publisher to have more books.’
‘I know my questions probably sound odd to you,’ Helgi said. ‘But I’m simply trying to get a handle on the situation. And the first thing we need to do is makeabsolutely sure she really is missing and that it’s not all some big misunderstanding—’
Rut interrupted again, raising her voice: ‘There is no misunderstanding. Elín has disappeared: it’s blindingly obvious. I went round to her house this morning – all three of us have keys, you see – and it was clear that—’
‘You, your husband – and Lovísa?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK.’
‘Yes, and I could see immediately that Elín hadn’t been home for several days. The newspapers and her post had been piling up.’
Helgi observed that the woman appeared to be on the defensive. As if she was afraid of making a mistake.
‘Can you think of any explanation, Rut?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Anything – however far-fetched or seemingly obvious – that might shed light on her disappearance?’
‘No,’ Rut answered, perhaps a little too quickly. Her hesitation came afterwards. He got the impression that something wasn’t being said. ‘Something’s happened,’ Rut went on. ‘That’s clear to me. People don’t just vanish for no reason. I’m glad the police are taking this seriously, but then of course Elín’s a public figure and the police can’t afford to mess up a case like this.’
‘Do you think someone could have harmed her?’
Rut appeared stunned by the question. ‘I just can’t believe that. No, I’m wondering if she could have gone for a day trip or a weekend away, something like that, to the countryside, maybe to a summer cabin, or that shewent for a walk in the mountains, set out to climb Mount Esja – what do I know? – and had a stroke or…’
‘Did she have a pre-existing condition?’
‘No, far from it. That’s the problem.’
Helgi nodded.
Rut continued: ‘In fact, she was one of the strongest people I’ve ever met.’
The choice of words, her use of the past tense, gave Helgi a sudden shiver of misgiving.
2005
[hissing]
Elín, you wrote about crimes, about death – is death a subject you give a lot of thought to?
[pause]
Now, you mean? Yes, I suppose so, I probably always have done, but one’s attitude to it changes over the years. When I was younger – younger than you – death was purely a concept, an idea, somebody else’s problem. I believe that what young people have in common, most of them, is that they don’t really believe in death. You feel that, yes, sure, it can get its claws into other people, but there’s no proof it’ll ever come for you. The whole thing seems abstract.I suppose that’s how it should be when you’re young. Then, when I reached middle age, around the time I started writing my crime novels, I gradually became conscious of my own mortality. It wasn’t any one specific thing that brought it home to me, I just finally managed to face facts, and it was an uncomfortable feeling. I remember thinking to myself, maybe I’ll give it a go, publish a book; maybe I’ll just go ahead and take the plunge. I felt I had nothing to lose anyway, now that the consciousness of mortality had taken up residence in my soul. Life’s like that: one thing leads to another; but I’m very glad I made the leap and decided to let people read what I’d been scribbling. These days, my friends and contemporaries are increasingly going the way of all flesh. It’s sad, but not unexpected. An uncomfortable but salutary reminder. There are times, though, when I wake up from a dreamless sleep and briefly experience that old feeling of immortality, as though I’m untouchable, exempt from the common human lot. A moment of certainty, followed by wishful thinking, before eventually the consciousness comes back to me. It’s fine, but that short-lived moment of blissfulcertainty is like a flashback to my youth, because I believe we’re simultaneously young and old, children and pensioners. We’re everything we’ve ever been.
[pause]
