Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - The Silence of the Sea

‘I’ll fetch the girls. Don’t worry – Halli will wait with you.’ Ægir walked calmly out of the saloon, quickening his pace as soon as the door closed behind him. He did not run, however. Rationally, he knew his worries were unnecessary. Under normal circumstances he would not even have been moving this fast, but the situation could in no way be described as normal. Only now did he truly acknowledge to himself that something was seriously amiss on board and that the corpse in the freezer was only part of it. This boat was quite simply a bad place. He breathed more easily as he approached the twins’ door and heard the sound of the film.

They were still sitting where he had left them, side by side with their backs bolt upright against the headboard. When he appeared in the doorway they muttered a barely audible greeting but did not raise their eyes from the screen. The film must be incredibly gripping since he usually merited at least a grin. ‘What, not even a hello?’ He pulled a sad face.

‘It’s a really good film. Don’t talk to us now.’

The yacht lurched suddenly and Ægir grabbed the door frame. ‘Sorry, girls. I’m afraid you’re going to have to turn it off and come upstairs to join me and your mother. You can pause it, can’t you?’

They turned their heads, their faces frightened. For the thousandth time he marvelled at the magic of genes. He took it for granted that they were identical in appearance but it was beyond him to understand how a cluster of cells could be arranged in such a way as to make the responses of two individual human beings so alike. At times they moved in unison, as if performing synchronised swimming on dry land. This was one of those moments. They even blinked simultaneously, under furrowed brows. ‘Why?’ Uttered with one voice, naturally. ‘It’s nearly finished.’

‘Because the sea’s so rough that we want to have you near us. You can watch the film any time you like; it’s not going anywhere.’

They ceased to act as one; Arna folded her arms mutinously while Bylgja drew up her legs and said with relentless logic: ‘If we can watch it any time why can’t we watch it now?’

‘You know what I mean. Don’t twist my words. Your mother’s waiting upstairs and she’ll be worried if we don’t hurry back.’ He picked up the remote control. ‘There’s a TV in the saloon, so you can carry on watching it there if you like.’ When he switched off the television, the room was plunged into darkness. ‘Why have you drawn the curtains? Was the light shining on the screen?’

‘No. We didn’t want to see out. It was gross.’ This time it was Arna who answered.

‘Gross? That’s hardly the right word, sweetheart. The weather may be rough or stormy, but it’s not gross.’

‘We’re not talking about the weather.’

‘Oh?’ Ægir was puzzled. ‘What then? The waves?’

‘No.’ Bylgja shook her head, frowning. ‘The woman. She fell past the window into the sea. We both saw her when we came downstairs earlier. I’d seen you getting in the water and we wanted to watch you dive. We weren’t allowed out on deck so we had to come down here to watch out of our window. Upstairs you only get a view of the deck. But it turns out that our window faces the other way, so we couldn’t see you – only the woman falling. We thought it was Mummy at first but when she was lying in the sea we got a better look and realised it wasn’t her.’

Ægir swallowed a lump in his throat. ‘Are you sure you weren’t dreaming?’ Now at least it was possible to establish that the woman had been thrown from the deck above the girls’ cabin. He had been lowered into the sea on the other side of the ship, so for him to have caught sight of it the body must have been pulled under the keel by the current.

‘No, we weren’t,’ they replied in chorus.

‘There’s no woman on board apart from your mother and she’s sitting upstairs in the saloon.’ Perhaps this was the wrong thing to say; they might have to give a statement to the police later and it was unfair to confuse them like this.

‘It wasn’t Mummy, it was the woman in the painting. Wearing the same dress and everything.’ Bylgja shuddered. ‘Her face looked horrible. Then she sank.’

Ægir took a deep breath, making a heroic effort to control his features. If this was true, the woman in the freezer must have been Karítas. He recalled the material of the garment that had been billowing about the gruesome body and conceded that it may well have been the same dress. The colours had looked duller but then the sea would mute them, as it did sound.

‘I told you they wouldn’t believe us.’ Arna got up from the bed. ‘You never believe us.’

‘Of course I do.’ Ægir groped for the right words, for some way to distract their attention. His mind was blank. ‘Why didn’t you fetch your mother? Or someone else?’

‘We didn’t dare leave the cabin at first but when we finally went upstairs Mummy was panicking because she thought you’d fallen in the sea. We tried to tell her you were diving but she wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to hear about the woman either.’ Arna looked doubtfully at her father. ‘Are you angry?’

‘Angry? No, not in the least. But do you know what? It was actually a good thing you didn’t mention it. Very good, in fact. I want to ask you to keep this a secret. You mustn’t tell anyone – anyone at all. It’s really, really important. Do you understand?’ He had been overwhelmed by a sudden terror that if it became common knowledge, the person who disposed of the body might think the girls had spotted him. He would have to be a complete monster to attack children, but Ægir wasn’t taking any risks. ‘Not Mummy. And not any of the crew. Okay?’

They exchanged surprised glances. ‘Why not?’ Bylgja had obviously detected something odd in his behaviour and her voice betrayed alarm.

‘Because this must be our secret. I promise to tell you why after we get home. I promise.’ He knelt down beside them. ‘We three know it happened, but nobody else must know. So we won’t tell anyone until later.’

But of course he was wrong: the perpetrator knew where and when it had happened. And he was one of them: Thráinn, Halli or Loftur. All equally implausible, yet all equally plausible. ‘What time did you come down here, Bylgja? Was it straight after you saw me lowered over the side?’ She nodded, worried that she had done something wrong. Ægir tried to work out what this meant. Bylgja must have left the window and told her sister what she had seen. Then they had spoken to their mother and told her they were going below, before coming down here and taking up position by the window. So about ten to fifteen minutes must have passed between his entering the sea and the body being thrown overboard. Which meant he couldn’t even rule out Thráinn or Halli. Although they had been out on deck with him to start with, he hadn’t been able to see if they were still there during the time he was underwater.

Ægir rose to his feet. He couldn’t stand this, couldn’t stand the sea a moment longer or the thought that he had placed his family in jeopardy. The decision to sail home was the stupidest of his life. His eyes strayed to the briefcase leaning against the wall by the desk, which reminded him of what felt almost like a previous existence; the daily grind that may not have put much in his pocket but was at least neither strenuous nor risky. He had been a fool. Looking down at the twins’ dark heads, he knew he had failed them. And Lára. And Sigga Dögg, who was waiting for them at home. He clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw ached. They had to get back to Iceland – the sooner the better.

In his mind he kept reciting the names of the crew as if they were a nursery rhyme: Thráinn, Halli, Loftur. Halli, Loftur, Thráinn. Loftur, Thráinn, Halli. Which one had done this? Please God, don’t let them all be in it together.