Arnaldur Indridason - Voices

“And your two sons?”

“We haven’t told them. They’ve both left home. Not enough time for ourselves while they were there, too much time when they’d moved out. Maybe we didn’t know each other any longer. Two strangers after all those years.”

They fell silent.

“You don’t have to apologise to me for anything,” Erlendur said eventually, looking at her. “Far from it. I’m the one who should apologise for not being straight with you. For lying to you.”

“Lying to me?”

“You asked why I was interested in deaths in the mountains, in storms and up on the moors, and I didn’t tell you the truth. It’s because I’ve hardly ever talked about it and find it difficult, I suppose. I don’t think it’s anyone else’s business. Not my children’s business either. My daughter had a near-fatal experience and I thought she was going to die — it was only then that I felt the need to talk about it to her. To tell her about it”

“Talk about what?” Valgerdur asked. “Was it something that happened?”

“My brother froze to death,” Erlendur said. “When he was eight. He was never found and still hasn’t been found.”

He had told a complete stranger, a woman at a hotel bar, what had been weighing down his heart for almost as long as he could remember. Maybe it was a long-awaited dream. Maybe he did not want to wage that war any longer.

“There’s a story about us in one of those books on. tragedies that I’m always reading,” he said. “The story of what happened when my brother died, the search and the gloom and grief that engulfed our home. A remarkably accurate account actually, related by one of the leaders of the search party, which a friend of my father’s wrote down. All our names are given, it describes our household and my father’s reaction, which was considered strange because he was overwhelmed by total hopelessness and self-recrimination, and sat in his room rigid and staring into space while everyone else was searching for all they were worth. We weren’t asked permission when the account was published and my parents were extremely upset by it. I can show it to you some time if you want.”

Valgerdur nodded.

Erlendur began to tell her, she sat and listened, and when he had finished she leaned back in her seat and sighed.

“So you never found him?” she said.

Erlendur shook his head.

“Long after this happened, even sometimes today, I imagine he’s not dead. That he got down from the moor, weatherbeaten and having lost his memory, and that I’ll meet him some time later. I look for him in crowds and try to imagine what he looks like. Apparently this is not an uncommon reaction when no bodily remains are found. I know that from being in the police. Hope lives on when nothing else is left.”

“You must have been close,” Valgerdur said. “You and your brother.”

“We were good friends” Erlendur said.

They sat in deep silence, watching the hustle and bustle at the hotel from their respective worlds. Their glasses were empty and neither thought of ordering more. A good while passed until Erlendur cleared his throat, leaned over to her and asked her in a hesitant voice a question that had been preying on his mind ever since she started talking about her husband’s infidelities.

“Do you still want to take revenge on him?”

Valgerdur looked at him and nodded.

“But not yet,” she said. “I can’t…”

“No,” Erlendur said. “You’re right. Of course.”

“Why don’t you tell me about one of those missing persons you’re so interested in? That you’re always reading about.”

Erlendur smiled, thought for a moment and then started telling her about a man who disappeared right in front of everyone’s eyes: Jon Bergthdrsson, a thief from Skagafjordur.

He went out onto the sea ice off the Skagi coast to fetch a shark that had been hauled up through a hole in the ice the previous day. Suddenly a southerly wind set in, it began to rain and the ice split and drifted out to sea with Jon on it. Rescuing him by boat was ruled out because of the storm, and the ice drifted northwards out of the fjord, driven by the southerly wind.

The last time Jon was seen was through a pair of binoculars as he scurried back and forth across the iceberg on the distant northern horizon.

The soft bar music had a soporific effect and they sat in silence until Valgerdur reached over and took hold of his hand.

“I’d better be going now” she said.

Erlendur nodded and they both stood up. She kissed him on the cheek and stood pressed up against him for a moment.

Neither of them noticed when Eva Lind walked into the bar and saw them from a distance. Saw them stand up, saw her kiss him and apparently snuggle up against him. Eva Lind shuddered and marched over.

“Who’s this old cow?” Eva said, staring at them.

“Eva,” Erlendur reproached her, startled at suddenly seeing his daughter in the bar. “Be polite.”

Valgerdur held out her hand and Eva Lind looked at it, looked Valgerdur in the face and then back at the outstretched hand. Erlendur watched them both in turn and ended up glaring at Eva.

“Her name’s Valgerdur and she’s a good friend of mine,” he said.

Eva Lind looked at her father and at Valgerdur again but did not shake her hand. With an embarrassed smile, Valgerdur turned round. Erlendur followed her out of the bar and watched her cross the lobby. Eva Lind went over to him.

“What was that?” she said. “Have you started buying the tarts at the bar here?”

“How could you be so rude?” Erlendur said. “How could you think of behaving like that? It’s none of your business. Leave me in bloody peace!”

“Right! You can go poking your nose into my business 24-fucking-7 but I’m not allowed to know who you’re shagging at this hotel!”

“Stop talking such filth! What makes you think you can talk to me like that?”

Eva Lind stopped but glared angrily at her father. He stared at her, furious.

“What the hell do you want from me, child?” he shouted in her face, then ran after Valgerdur. She had left the hotel and through the revolving doors he saw her stepping into a taxi. When he came out onto the pavement in front of the hotel he saw the taxi’s red rear lights fading in the distance and finally vanish around the corner.

Erlendur cursed as he watched the tail lights disappear. Not in any mood to go back to the bar where Eva Lind was waiting for him, he went back inside absent-mindedly and down the stairs to the basement, and before he realised he was in the corridor where Gudlaugur’s room was. He found a switch and turned it on, and the few remaining working bulbs cast a gloomy light onto the corridor. He fumbled his way along until he reached the little room, opened the door and turned on the light. The Shirley Temple poster greeted his eyes.

The Little Princess.

He heard light footsteps along the corridor and Eva Lind appeared in the doorway.

“The girl upstairs said she saw you go down to the basement,” Eva said, looking into the room. Her gaze stopped at the bloodstains on the bed. “Was it here that it happened?” she asked.

“Yes,” Erlendur said.

“What’s that poster?”

“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “I don’t understand the way you act sometimes. You shouldn’t go calling her an old cow and refuse to shake her hand. She hasn’t done you any harm.”

Eva Lind said nothing.

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself? Erlendur said.

“Sorry,” Eva said.

Erlendur didn’t reply. He stood staring at the poster. Shirley Temple in a pretty summer frock with a ribbon in her hair, smiling in Technicolor. The Little Princess. Made in 1939, based on the story by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Temple played a lively girl who was sent to a London boarding school when her father went abroad: he left her in the care of a harsh headmistress.