Yrsa Sigurdardóttir - My Soul to Take

“It sounds as though you weren’t too pleased about it,” Thóra said. “Did she go straight from you to Bergur?”

“Yes.” Jónas scowled. “I suppose she did.”

“You seem quite angry,” Thóra said. “Maybe I’m missing something, but I find it strange that you wanted her to continue working here under the circumstances, even if the split was amicable.”

“It was. I’m not lying,” he said. “What could I do? She didn’t want me anymore. Life’s like that sometimes. She was a good architect, and she understood my plans for developing the area. I’m man enough to be able to keep business and pleasure separate.”

“Good for you,” said Thóra. “Let’s just hope that the other witnesses back you up when they’re questioned.” She looked at him sternly. “If not, it won’t look good.”

“Why not?” Jónas asked, affronted. “Aren’t I allowed to have girlfriends?”

“Of course you are,” said Thóra, slightly annoyed. “But you know what I mean. And another thing—who’s the man in the stables? Maybe it’s Bergur. What then?”

He turned pale. “I … I don’t know.”

Thóra started to get up. “I shouldn’t be painting too dark a picture. We don’t even know yet if it was an accident or something worse.” Jónas looked at her. “Do you think the police would ask me about foxes and cryptic letters if a farmhand had fallen out of the hayloft? No, there’s some connection with what happened here.” Matthew’s arm rested lightly on Thóra’s shoulders as they stood on the beach watching the surf. She had asked him to take a short walk with her before they went to sleep, because the smell of disinfectant was still in her nostrils and would give her a migraine if she wasn’t careful. She closed her eyes and was about to say something romantic when her mobile rang.

“Anyone would think the hotel was the only place around here where there’s no mobile reception,” sighed Matthew.

Thóra answered it quickly.

“Hi, Thóra. Sorry to call you so late,” said a female voice. “It’s Dísa from next door.”

“Oh, hello,” Thóra said, surprised. Had her house caught fire?

“I did try to call earlier, but your phone must have been switched off,” said Dísa apologetically.

“No, I’m on Snæfellsnes and the signal’s patchy,” Thóra said, hoping her neighbor would get to the point. “It comes and goes.”

“Yes, I knew you were out of town. That’s why I called you. I saw somebody driving away in your SUV with the trailer, at about eleven. I thought it was rather strange. Did you lend it to anyone?”

“No,” said Thóra, perplexed. “Thanks, Dísa. I’ll check whether anyone borrowed it, and if not, I’ll call the police. Thanks again.”

She hung up and saw that six text messages were waiting for her. She opened the most recent one. It said, “call me asap—gylfi left and took sóley with him.”

Thóra let out a laugh that turned into a groan. She looked at Matthew and said wearily, “Never have children. Stick with that little girl in Africa.”

Thóra was pacing in circles around the parking lot, trying to get a mobile signal. Matthew watched her in bemusement. “Why don’t you use the phone in your room?” he asked, hopping up and down to keep warm. The weather was horrible—Thóra couldn’t tell if they were in the middle of a bank of fog or if it was just low clouds.

She had made a fruitless attempt to contact her son the previous evening, and wanted to start the day by locating both him and her trailer. The boy did not have a valid driver’s license, but he was taking lessons. Thóra was petrified that something bad had happened. The sequence of texts on her mobile had painted a clear picture of the scenario as it unfolded. The first three were from Gylfi. In the first he expressed displeasure at not being able to go home as planned, in the second he said his dad was driving him mad, and the third merely stated, “eye of the tiger—im out of here.” Several texts from her ex followed, declaring Gylfi impossible to live with and blaming her for that. Thóra erased those messages. Gylfi was generally fairly soft-spoken, a keen student, and far from the thug his father described. He was only young, though, and sometimes had trouble holding his tongue, especially on the subject of his father’s dreadful attempts at karaoke. “Eye of the Tiger” had clearly been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Thóra could not recall Gylfi ever being excited about going to stay with his father, even without his sister’s PlayStation SingStar. After their divorce, Hannes had met a woman who was a passionate horse lover and he had been bitten by the same bug. Neither Gylfi nor Sóley shared his interest—in fact, Gylfi was frightened of horses, a fear he had picked up from his mother. He always felt uncomfortable at his father’s house, with the threat of a horse ride hanging over his head. In spite of all Thóra’s efforts to explain, Hannes refused to understand. He always said their son “just hadn’t got the hang of it yet.”

Thóra sighed deeply, waiting for Gylfi to pick up. She wondered whether she should call his girlfriend’s parents, but quailed at the thought. Gylfi had obviously taken her with him on his impromptu trailer journey, because Thóra had received a text from the girl’s mother and didn’t care to recollect the language she had used. As a mother, Thóra could well understand the woman’s fury; she would not be best pleased if it were her daughter, Sóley, on the verge of giving birth in her sixteenth year, absconding with a boy hardly any older in an SUV pulling a trailer. She thanked her lucky stars that Sigga’s parents had not realized that Gylfi was driving without a license.

Eventually her call was answered and Gylfi’s sleepy voice came over the line. “Hello.”

“Where are you?” shouted Thóra, who had intended to remain calm.

“What? Me?” Gylfi asked foolishly.

“Yes, you, of course. Where are you?”

Gylfi yawned. “Somewhere near Hveragerdi, I think. We drove past it yesterday.”

Thóra cursed herself for not having made more effort to travel around the country with the kids. From previous experience she knew that the whole of southern Iceland was “near Hveragerdi” to Gylfi’s mind, just as the whole of north Iceland was “near Akureyri.”

“Are you in the trailer?” she asked, adding in the next breath, “And who’s this ‘we’?”

“ ‘We’ are me and Sigga,” Gylfi said, then muttered, “Oh, and Sóley too.”

“Sóley’s still with you?” yelled Thóra. “Why haven’t you dropped her off at your grandmother’s? You don’t even have a driver’s license yet, and even if you did, you wouldn’t be allowed to tow a trailer. To say nothing of your pregnant girlfriend and six-year-old sister.”

“Driving’s a cinch,” Gylfi said with masculine self-confidence. “And just so you know, Sóley’s here because she refused to tell me where you hid the keys to the SUV unless I took her along. Even she’d had enough of Dad’s caterwauling. She couldn’t use her PlayStation since he wouldn’t get off bloody SingStar.”

Thóra groaned. “Gylfi,” she said as calmly as she could manage, “don’t move the trailer another inch. I’ll come and collect you tonight. Are you at a campsite?”

“Uh, no,” Gylfi replied. “I don’t think so. We’re just somewhere I stopped.”

“I see,” Thóra said. She closed her eyes and shook her head to ward off a scream. “Find out exactly where you are and let me know. Send me a text; the connection’s dismal here. Don’t go any farther. You don’t want to end up injuring yourself or someone else in the traffic.”