Arnaldur Indridason - Arctic Chill

The corpse had been washed up in one of the coves. Although the official search for the woman had been called off some time ago, a small team of voluntary rescue workers from nearby Hafnarfjordur had been on a dawn exercise, combing the beaches south of the aluminium plant, when they stumbled across the body. Elinborg was talking to members of the team in one of the patrol cars that had made it all the way down to the sea. An ambulance and two other police cars were parked a short way from the corpse, their headlights illuminating the narrow cove, the breakers on the beach and the figures stooping over the body.

Elinborg stepped out of the car when she saw Erlendur approaching.

“Has someone let the husband know?” he asked, stopping.

“I gather he’s on his way.”

“Is it definitely her?”

“There’s no question. We found her ID. Aren’t you going to take a look at her?”

“Yes, in a minute,” Erlendur said, taking out a packet of cigarettes and lighting one. He had dreaded this moment. It would be the first time he had seen the woman and he wished that it had not been like this, as a corpse on a Reykjanes beach. He remembered their last telephone conversation. He had been a brute. He regretted it now.

The Hafnarfjordur district medical officer had been summoned to sign the death certificate. When he had finished examining the body, he walked over to them.

“Can you see any injuries?” Erlendur asked.

“No, not at first sight,” the medical officer said.

The phone calls had been so brief, so truncated. Erlendur wondered if he could have responded differently. Could he have helped her? Ought he to have listened to her better?

“I’m only here to sign the death certificate,” the medical officer said. “The police pathologist will have to determine the cause of death.”

They saw a jeep approaching. Erlendur flicked away his cigarette butt. The jeep stopped by the squad cars and the woman’s husband jumped out and started running towards them.

“Have you found her?” he called.

Erlendur and Elinborg exchanged glances. The man’s path was blocked by police officers.

“Is it her?” the man yelled, staring over towards the body. “Oh my God! What has she done?”

He tried to push past them but the police officers held him back.

“What have you done?” he shouted in the direction of the body.

Erlendur and Elinborg stood motionless in the cold, their eyes meeting. The man turned to Erlendur.

“Look what she’s done!” he shouted in utter despair. “Why did she do this? Why?”

The officers led the man aside and tried to calm him.

Erlendur stood in the shelter of a large police vehicle with Elinborg and the medical officer. His thoughts went out to the woman’s children and former husband. He knew that the more time that elapsed after her disappearance, the more their fears for the worst had grown, and now their worst nightmares had been realised.

Erlendur had told the husband about the phone calls and had no idea what to do about that now that she was dead. He felt it was probably best to maintain a discreet silence about them. He heard her voice, heard her desperation and fear and that strange hesitancy, the half-finished sentences that made it hard for him to know what she wanted of him. He sighed heavily and lit up another cigarette.

“What are you thinking?” Elinborg asked.

“Those bloody phone calls,” Erlendur said.

“From her?” Elinborg asked.

“They keep preying on my mind. The last time I spoke to her I was … I was a bit sharp with her.”

“Typical,” Elinborg said.

“I could tell she was suffering but I had the feeling that she was playing some kind of game with me. I didn’t give her enough time. I’m such a crass idiot”

“You couldn’t have changed anything.”

“Excuse me,” the medical officer said. “When did you talk to her?”

He was an older man with whom Erlendur was slightly acquainted.

“Yesterday evening,” Erlendur said.

“You were talking to that woman yesterday evening?”

“Yes.”

“That’s strange.”

“Oh?”

“That woman hasn’t been phoning anyone recently.”

“Really?”

“And certainly not yesterday”

“I’m telling you, she’s called me several times over the past few days.”

“Of course I’m just an ordinary doctor,” the medical officer said. “I’m no expert, but it’s out of the question. Forget it. She’s unrecognisable.”

Erlendur ground his cigarette under his shoe and stared at the medical officer.

“What are you saying?”

“She’s been in the sea for at least two weeks,” the medical officer said. “It’s out of the question that she could have been alive a couple of days ago. Totally impossible. Why do you think they haven’t let her husband see her?”

Erlendur gazed at him, speechless.

“What on earth’s happening?” He sighed and started to walk towards the woman’s body.

“You mean it wasn’t her?” Elinborg said, following on his heel.

“What… ?”

“Who else could it have been?”

“I don’t know.”

“If it wasn’t her who called, who was it?”

Erlendur looked down at the corpse with utter incomprehension. It had been badly battered during its stay in the sea.

“Who was it then?” he groaned. “Who is this woman who’s been calling me and talking to me about… about… What was it she said? I can’t do it ?”

The man who had first complained about the scratches on his car was voluble on the subject of the indifference shown by the police when he originally reported the vandalism. They could not have been less interested, merely wrote a report for the insurance company, and he had heard nothing since. He phoned to find out what progress they were making in catching the bastards who vandalised his car but could never get to speak to anyone who had a clue what was going on.

The man ranted on in the same vein for some time and Sigurdur Oli could not be bothered to interrupt him. He was not really listening; his thoughts were preoccupied with Bergthora and the issue of adoption. After exhaustive tests it had emerged that the problem lay with Bergthora. She could not have children, although she yearned to with all her heart. The whole process had put a severe strain on their relationship, both before they discovered that Bergthora could not have children — after bitter experience and countless visits to specialists — and, not least in the aftermath. Sigurdur Oli felt sure that Bergthora had not yet recovered. He himself had come to the conclusion that “since that’s the way it is’, as he put it to Bergthora, perhaps they should accept the situation and leave it at that. The subject had raised its head again when he came home from work yesterday evening. Bergthora had started saying that, as Sigurdur Oli was well aware, Icelandic couples mainly adopted from South East Asia, India and China.

“I don’t spend as much time thinking about it as you do,” he said as carefully as he could.

“So you don’t care then?” Bergthora asked.

“Of course I care,” Sigurdur Oli said. “I care about your feelings, about our feelings. I just…”

“What?”

“I don’t know if you’re in any state to make a snap decision about adoption. It’s a pretty big step.”

Bergthora took a deep breath.

“We’ll never agree on this,” she said.

“I just feel we need more time to recover and talk it over.”

“Of course, you can have a child any time you like,” Bergthora said cynically.

“What?”

“If you had the slightest interest, which you never have had.”

“Bergthora.”

“You’ve never really been interested, have you?”