Arnaldur Indridason - Oblivion

He listened out for Rasmus but couldn’t hear so much as a cough or a groan anywhere in the house, only his own laboured breathing. He had to get out of here as soon as possible and call for help, but then he remembered that Rasmus had entered the hall from a door that presumably led to the garage. Erlendur wavered until curiosity overcame common sense. Taking a deep breath and clutching the scissors tight, he set off in the direction from which Rasmus had come.

Slowly he hobbled to the door. It was closed but not locked and he opened it cautiously. Inside was a laundry room. There was an old washing machine against one wall. A musty stench of dirty clothes. When he stepped inside, his hair brushed against washing lines fixed to the ceiling. There was a fuse box on one wall, with meters next to it. On the other side of the laundry was another door which stood a little ajar, admitting a strip of light from the garage.

Erlendur limped warily over and peered inside. A dim bulb hung from the ceiling. The floor space was almost entirely occupied by something covered in a thick, white tarpaulin. Erlendur went over and tugged clumsily at the cover, hampered by the scissors, until he managed to pull it off to reveal a classic American automobile that had once, long ago, been reversed into the garage. It was a two-door Chevrolet Deluxe, a 1948 model, bright green, and so lovingly cared for that it looked almost like new. The paintwork was polished, the windows shone, the chrome fittings gleamed and you could see your reflection in the hubcaps. On second glance, there was no air in the tyres and the rubber was cracked and perished, but in all other respects the car was a vision and one would have thought, from its appearance, that it was still in use.

Although gleaming and beautiful on the outside, inside the car was full of dust and dirt that hadn’t been disturbed for many years. Erlendur’s attention was drawn to a shapeless mass on the back seat. It was leaning against the window, covered in a yellowed blanket. He needed two hands to open the door as it was stiff and heavy and the hinges creaked as if it hadn’t been moved for a long time. He tipped the driver’s seat forward and reached into the back. Blood from his wound dripped into the interior as he stretched out his arm, grasped the blanket and jerked at it. He had to tug three times before it came away and fell to the floor of the car, stirring up a cloud of dust. He was confronted by a skeleton in old, rotten clothes. The skull, which was leaning towards him, had dead, dusty tufts of hair down to the shoulders, empty eye sockets and a jaw gaping in silent anguish.

Filled with sadness and horror at the sight, Erlendur failed to notice Rasmus materialise in the doorway behind him. But he heard him — as the other man emitted a screech and pounced on him, gripping him round the neck and trying to tear him out of the car. Finding the scissors still in his hand, Erlendur jabbed them into Rasmus’s thigh. He was rewarded with a cry of pain. Then Rasmus leapt onto his back and tightened his throttling grip until finally Erlendur managed to turn and, with the last of his strength, batter Rasmus against the door frame. He stabbed behind him with the scissors, heard Rasmus scream, and felt the grip on his throat slacken. Rasmus fell off his back, landing half inside the car. Erlendur grabbed his legs, pushed him into the front seat and slammed the door. Rasmus started frantically hammering and kicking at it and Erlendur, exhausted from the struggle, wondered how long he could hold the door against him. Casting round desperately for an implement, he seized a shovel and wedged it firmly between the car door and the wall. Rasmus tried to wind down the window but the handle broke off. He threw himself over at the passenger door but could only open it a crack because the car was parked close to the wall on that side. He rattled it madly like an animal in a cage, then, panicking, banged at the window on the driver’s side with his bare fists, weeping and shouting and hammering until his delicate fingers were bloody, and the realisation finally sank in that he was trapped.

The funeral, which was held at the Fríkirkja church, was a simple affair, attended only by Dagbjört’s friends and remaining relatives. The unexpected revelation of her fate had, unsurprisingly, caused a sensation in the press but the reporters mostly stayed away from the church. The vicar spoke of being robbed of a young life in an incomprehensible manner, but avoided any other reference to the horrific crime and the ghastly scene that had confronted the police in Rasmus’s garage. A small female choir sang the funeral hymn ‘Just as the Flower Fades’. Dagbjört’s old school friends carried her coffin and weeping was heard from all sides over the tragic waste and loss.

Svava had invited Erlendur to attend. He had managed to crawl to the nearest house to raise the alarm before fainting again from loss of blood. He hadn’t woken up until noon next day. Marion told him they had found Rasmus locked in the car just as Erlendur had left him. He had put up no resistance and even asked if Erlendur was all right. The car turned out to have belonged to Rasmus’s mother; he didn’t have a licence so had never driven it himself. It had been taken off the register shortly after Mrs Kruse’s death and had remained in the garage ever since. Forensics had established that the body had in all probability been kept in the back seat from the beginning.

One of Erlendur’s first actions once he was feeling a little better, though still stuck in hospital, swathed in bandages, with an ache in his side, was to send someone round to see Svava and fill her in on the events of the last few days. He had needed an operation to repair the damage caused by the scissors but Erlendur was quick to recover and his strength was improving by the day. He was still in charge of the Dagbjört inquiry. Rasmus had been remanded in custody at Sídumúli Prison where he was undergoing psychiatric tests.

Once he was out of hospital, Erlendur went round to see Svava himself to tell her the whole story, explaining how he had picked up the trail as a result of exhaustive interviews with a number of people. He reported his encounter with Mensalder who had kept quiet all this time about his planned meeting with Dagbjört for fear of being implicated in her disappearance. It was unlikely that he could have saved the girl’s life by coming forward at once, but she would almost certainly have been found much earlier. Suspicion would immediately have fallen on Dagbjört’s nearest neighbours, including Rasmus. The man hadn’t attracted any attention at the time since there had been no reason to suppose that Dagbjört had died so close to home. He had been regarded as an eccentric recluse but not dangerous. He had nothing to do with his neighbours and they had nothing to do with him and so it remained.

‘What kind of person is he?’ asked Svava.

‘I don’t know,’ said Erlendur. ‘Disturbed, obviously, but pathetic too. He said he wasn’t always like that. Perhaps the secret in the garage gradually warped him into what he’s become today.’

‘How’s it possible? How could he have kept it secret? Their next-door neighbour!’

‘I don’t kn—’

‘Why wasn’t the man ever investigated?’

‘It’s not a crime to live alone and shut yourself off from the world.’

‘Perhaps he lived too close to her,’ said Svava. ‘It didn’t occur to anybody that she could be in the house next door. Nobody dreamt of such a thing. That she could have vanished only a few yards from home.’

‘Yes, of course, it was highly improbable. He... he says he loved her and I think there’s a grain of truth in that. In his own peculiar way he did love her.’