Арнальдур Индридасон - The Shadow District

‘He didn’t say. Didn’t like to discuss it, any more than he did the other stuff that happened at that seance. After we’d been found out no one would listen to him any more.’

‘Didn’t he tell you anything about her?’

‘No. Except the bit about the cold. He said she’d been accompanied by this powerful feeling of cold. But listen, Konrád, he was a bloody amateur, this bloke, and most of what he came out with was stuff I’d fed him.’

The story of the seance had remained etched in Konrád’s memory because it was the last conversation of the kind that he’d had with his father. One evening in mid February, Konrád had come home near midnight to see a police car parked in front of their basement flat and two officers hanging about outside. He wasn’t particularly surprised, as his father was certainly known to the police and whenever there was a burglary, or a bootlegger was busted, or a major smuggling ring was exposed, they would come round to question him, even haul him off to the station on Pósthússtræti. It was 1963. Konrád had recently dropped out of technical college where he had been training to be a printer and started drinking heavily. His father had never interfered much in his life, and he seldom heard from his mother who had moved with Beta to Seydisfjördur in the East Fjords. Konrád’s drinking companions were generally other layabouts on a fast track to the gutter, or else his father. Konrád took cash-in-hand jobs on building sites, shoplifted, broke into cars, and ran errands for his father for a minor share in the profits of whatever shady activity he was involved in at the time. In spite of this, Konrád had never been caught or had any kind of brush with the law.

One of the officers approached him and asked if he lived in the building and knew the tenant in the basement. Konrád, who had learnt to be wary of the police, opened his mouth to trot out a lie but nothing came to mind. So he admitted that his father lived in the basement — they lived there together — and asked if it was him they were after.

‘No, we’re not looking for him,’ said the policeman. ‘Were you with him this evening?’

‘No,’ said Konrád. ‘Why are you asking?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

‘Any idea who he was going to meet?’

‘Why do you want to know?’ asked Konrád.

‘Had he fallen out with anyone recently? Was there anyone after him?’

‘After him? What are you on about?’

‘Your father’s dead, mate,’ said the other policeman. ‘Do you know if he was planning to break into the abattoir down on Skúlagata?’

Konrád wasn’t sure he’d heard right. ‘What do you mean?’ he said. ‘What did you say?’

‘He was found lying in the alley by the abattoir,’ said the policeman. ‘Stabbed. Do you know what he was doing there?’

‘What are you talking about? Stabbed! Was he stabbed?’

‘Yes, stabbed to death.’

Konrád gaped at the policemen. They had been sent to inform the dead man’s next of kin, but they knew his father well and saw no reason to be compassionate towards drunks and petty crooks. Just then a car drew up and yet another policeman climbed out. But this one wasn’t in uniform, and it soon became apparent that he was a detective.

‘What are you talking about?’ Konrád shouted furiously, shoving at one of the officers. He would gladly have punched him but the man’s partner immediately grabbed Konrád, knocked him down in the road and got him in a stranglehold. Konrád flailed wildly and it took both officers to overpower him. When they had managed to subdue him, they raised him to his feet again.

‘Let him go,’ ordered the detective wearily. ‘Leave him be.’

The two officers grumbled but eventually relinquished their grip on Konrád.

‘They’ve told you what happened?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you his son?’ asked the detective.

‘Yes. They said he was stabbed. What happened? Why...? Is he dead?’

‘Are you sure you don’t know what happened?’

‘Yes, I... I can’t believe it.’

‘You don’t know who attacked him?’

‘Attacked him? Me? No, I was in town. What the hell happened? Is... is he really dead?’

The detective nodded. Speaking in a level tone and, unlike the other officers, without a trace of superiority, he explained that a passer-by had found Konrád’s father lying in a pool of blood near the gates of the abattoir on Skúlagata. He had been stabbed twice and left lying in the road. There were no witnesses and they didn’t know the identity of his killer. Konrád couldn’t tell them anything about his father’s movements. He didn’t know what business his old man could have had at the abattoir or down on Skúlagata, and hadn’t a clue who he’d gone to meet or who he could have run into there. His father had fallen out with countless people over the course of his life and had always kept questionable company. Konrád quickly realised that his death was bound to be viewed in that light.

‘My condolences, son,’ said the detective. ‘I’m sorry you had to find out like this. If there’s anything I can do for you, anything that bothers you, anything you want to know, whatever it is, please get in touch.’

His father’s killer was never found. A comprehensive murder investigation was launched but eventually shelved due to lack of evidence. However, his father’s death did have a profound effect on Konrád: he eventually turned his back on his dead-end lifestyle, re-enrolled in technical college and finished his training as a printer. And, as fate would have it, some years later he joined the police and ended up a detective himself. From time to time his fellow officers would whisper about his father and once or twice even asked him outright about the case, but Konrád would bite their heads off. He never forgot, though, the kindness and consideration the detective had shown him in his hour of need.

The day after their trip to Hvalfjördur, Thorson and Flóvent met up again at the offices on Fríkirkjuvegur at noon. This time they were going to speak to the foreman of the road crew in Öxarfjördur. Flóvent had learnt his name from Vigga and after a few phone calls discovered that he had quit his job with the National Road Administration and started working instead for the Americans at Patterson Field in Sudurnes on the Reykjanes Peninsula.

They headed south-west along the Sudurnes road. The day was overcast but the sun broke through the thick layer of cloud here and there to strike a glittering light from the surface of the sea. As they drove, Flóvent took the opportunity to educate Thorson about the wealth of folk beliefs that had survived for centuries among ordinary Icelanders, passed down from generation to generation during the long, dark winter nights, when every sound carried on the wind might herald a terrifying revenant with gaping wounds; when every knoll or outcrop of rock might house the huldufólk . When the landscape was populated with ogresses and trolls who turned to stone at sunrise, or creatures like the nykur , a horse with hooves facing backwards, which left a trail that vanished into cold lakes, or the tilberi , a fetch-like creature that suckled from teats on women’s thighs. Fantastical tales like these had grown out of man’s relationship with nature, out of the Icelanders’ arduous struggle for survival in a harsh environment, out of their fear of the winter darkness. All of which, when combined with a love of storytelling and a fertile imagination, gave rise to magical worlds that could seem as real to people as their own.

‘But that all belongs in the past, surely?’ said Thorson as they entered the airfield. ‘It sounds like something out of the grey mists of time.’