Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - The Silence of the Sea

‘All right.’ Ægir had to admit that he was relieved. He dreaded descending into the confined space of the engine room where it was possible that a fourth man – or woman – was lurking. ‘We’ll just go back to the cabin and have a rest; have something to eat maybe. Then we’ll see. How does that sound?’

Once he had securely locked the door and given the girls a slice of bread and a yoghurt apiece, which they accepted but didn’t touch, he sat down and let his mind wander. A bitter laugh escaped him when he realised that if the yacht hadn’t tangled with the container they would almost be home by now. The girls both regarded him anxiously and he stifled his laughter. He mustn’t lose control – for their sake. If only he could lie down for ten minutes. Or even five. It would be enough to take the edge off his exhaustion and afterwards he would be in better shape to stay awake for the rest of the voyage. He closed his eyes, all his problems evaporated and he slipped gently into a dreamless, restorative sleep.

When he started awake he had no idea how long he had been dead to the world; the girls were sound asleep fully dressed on the bed, their colouring books open in front of them, the crayons scattered over the rumpled bedclothes. Outside it was pitch dark, but that didn’t tell him much as it had been near sunset when they came below.

Ægir rose, thanking God that nothing had happened while he was out for the count. He was furious with himself for failing in his guard duty but his reproaches lacked conviction since he had at least managed to sleep a little without anything going wrong. Yet he did not feel well rested and was seized by a longing to return to his comfy chair and slip back into unconsciousness. But that was impossible. His luck wouldn’t hold forever. He heard a noise overhead and wondered if that was what had woken him. It sounded peculiar, like something being dragged across the deck. Then it fell quiet. Suddenly there was a splash from outside the porthole Ægir had opened to air the cabin. He dashed over to see what had fallen into the water.

He felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. On the illuminated surface of the waves a man bobbed up, as if the sea were rejecting him. It was so unreal that it took Ægir a moment to focus. The body was floating face down but just before it vanished into the darkness astern, he recognised the muscular back and grey-streaked hair. The yacht no longer had a captain.

All that separated Ægir and his daughters from the man responsible for this monstrous deed was a flimsy wooden door. His heart lurched as he realised that on the other side Halli would be waiting.

‘What did I tell you?’ Bella’s attitude reminded Thóra of her mother’s reaction whenever she had taken a wrong turn in her teenage years after ignoring a piece of wise parental advice. ‘You should have listened to me. I knew it all along.’ The secretary folded her arms across her formidable bosom. ‘I have an unfallible instinct for that sort of thing.’

‘ In fallible.’ Thóra resisted the temptation to roll her eyes in case Bella noticed. She had been listening to the secretary’s crowing for several minutes now and enough was enough. What a mistake it had been to tell her that Karítas had probably never left Lisbon. Bella’s obsession with the fate of her old schoolmate had gone into overdrive. The worst of it was that Thóra couldn’t help agreeing with her. ‘It’s in fallible, not un fallible.’

‘Whatever.’ Bella did not allow this grammatical nit-picking to put her off her stride. ‘She’s dead, just like I said. It’s a no-brainer. I mean, is she meant to have just walked out of Portugal on her Jimmy Choos? As if. And I doubt she has a driving licence.’

Thóra’s mobile rang and she answered without even checking to see who it was. No phone call could be worse than listening to this. Bella kept talking, undaunted by Thóra’s inattentiveness; she merely raised her voice to drown out the competition. When Thóra rang off, she smiled brightly at the secretary. ‘Sorry, what were you saying, Bella?’

Bella glared at her. ‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘No. Not at all. What was it? That you were so clever because you’d always claimed Karítas was dead? Wasn’t that it?’

‘Yes.’ Bella smelt a rat. ‘Why are you looking like that?’

‘Only, that was Karítas’s mother on the phone. Her daughter’s come home.’ Thóra’s smile broadened. ‘But do go back to what you were saying. You have such an infallible instinct for these things. Please go on.’

Bella’s arms fell to her sides. ‘You’re kidding me?’ Her downturned mouth reminded Thóra of a bulldog’s. She had never seen anyone so disappointed by good news.

‘I’ll soon find out. I told Begga I’d drop by. But first I need to inform the police; I expect they’ll be interested in talking to Karítas too and I owe them some information. I haven’t been keeping up my end of the bargain.’

‘What, Karítas is willing to meet you?’ Bella looked astonished. Plainly she couldn’t care less about the information owing to the police. ‘That’s weird, seeing as how she didn’t even want to be your friend on Facebook. And she’s got hundreds.’

Thóra had thought the same thing. ‘According to her mother, Karítas herself suggested she ring me. I don’t know why but we’ll soon find out. Perhaps she needs a lawyer. If she does, it’ll be a wasted journey because I can’t act for her while Ægir’s parents are my clients.’

‘I’m coming with you. You don’t know how to handle a chav like her.’

‘She’s hardly a “chav”,’ protested Thóra. In all the photos Karítas had looked extremely glamorous; a little plastic, admittedly, but hardly a chav.

‘That’s what you think. I’m coming anyway.’ Bella rushed into reception to fetch her coat.

‘Really? I don’t remember you at all.’ Karítas stared at Bella, stretching her big blue eyes as wide as they would go. It didn’t suit her. Instead of the little-girl effect she was aiming for, she came across as a simpleton. She was draped across the sofa in her mother’s sitting room, her long legs taking up the entire seat so that Thóra, Bella and Begga had to make do with chairs. ‘You weren’t in my class, were you?’

‘No.’ Bella was sitting bolt upright, making no attempt to appear at all girlish. When Karítas’s mother had introduced her as an old schoolmate, Bella had looked uncomfortable; obviously she hadn’t wanted this information revealed straight away. Yet she had clearly taken umbrage at Karítas’s failure to remember her, so it was hard to work out what she did want.

‘Amazing.’ Karítas gave Bella a conspiratorial smile, apparently oblivious to the animosity sparking off her. ‘That’s, like, so weird. Did you used to be skinnier back then? Not so… you know?’

Thóra hastily interrupted to prevent violence from breaking out. ‘When did you get back to the country?’

‘I only just got here.’

Karítas’s mother broke in. Her eyes were red and swollen, her cheeriness forced. ‘I don’t understand how you can look so well, darling, after such an awful journey. All the way from Brazil. We wouldn’t look so fresh after such a long flight, would we?’ She addressed her words to Bella who stiffened even more.

‘Did you come via the States?’ Thóra noticed how oddly Karítas had reacted to her mother’s words, as if she would have liked to smash the nearby crystal vase over her head.

‘No.’ She did not elaborate but twined her fingers into a lattice, enlivened by slightly chipped hot-pink nail varnish. ‘Look, I didn’t get you round to talk about boring things like flights.’ She untwined her fingers and rested her hands demurely on the cushions on either side of her. The hot pink clashed violently with the crimson velvet. ‘You’re working on the yacht, aren’t you?’