Арнальдур Индридасон - The Darkness Knows

‘What does your brother do — for a living, I mean?’

‘He used to work on building sites. As a labourer. But he wasn’t always in work. He’s... he used to drink a bit. But Villi was a nice guy.’

Herdís grimaced as if pushing away an unpleasant thought.

‘Are you younger than him?’ Konrád asked.

‘Yes, by two years.’

She began to tell him about herself and her brother, still in that low, faltering voice. About the basement flat in the Hlídar area on the slopes of Öskjuhlíd, where they had lived with their mother, who worked in a shop and found it hard to make ends meet. Their parents had split up and they rarely saw their father, who had moved to another part of the country. There were only the two of them; they didn’t have any siblings. Neither got on well at school and both left as soon as they could. While still very young, Herdís had shacked up with a man in a rented flat on Hverfisgata, while her brother had gone to sea. He hadn’t taken to the fisherman’s life, though, so he’d got a job on land instead. He’d lived alone and partied hard.

Her brother couldn’t remember exactly when he’d first heard about Sigurvin’s disappearance but his interest had been sparked by an Icelandic true-crime documentary on TV, which had made a big deal about the fact that the victim’s car, a red jeep, had been found up by the tanks on Öskjuhlíd. Scenes from the story were dramatised and a red jeep was superimposed on photos of the hot-water tanks as they used to be, back before the new ones were built and topped by the futuristic glass dome known as Perlan.

‘It triggered a memory,’ Herdís said. ‘About things he’d never connected before. This was about twenty years later.’

‘That’s quite a long time,’ Konrád said. ‘For a witness statement.’

‘He was so desperate to talk about it that he told me and loads of other people too. But, all the same, he found the idea of getting mixed up in an old criminal case a bit embarrassing — stupid, you know. He couldn’t be sure he was right either. I encouraged him to tell the police anyway, so he went and talked to one of your lot, but the man thought it was all too vague to take seriously. Apparently they’d had hundreds of tip-offs that hadn’t led to anything. Villi reckoned his would end up in the same pile.’

‘Do you know who he spoke to at the police station?’

‘No, he didn’t say.’

‘What was it he saw?’

Herdís glanced at her empty coffee cup as if trying to decide whether to have another. Konrád watched her wrestle briefly with her conscience before making up her mind and helping herself to more vodka, not bothering with any coffee this time. She knocked it back in one.

‘Sorry to barge in on you like this,’ she said, replacing the cup on the table. ‘I didn’t mean to come round so late... I was... it’s just I had to have a couple of drinks first.’

‘You needed a bit of Dutch courage?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Why didn’t your brother come with you?’

‘I saw the news about Langjökull and felt I had to talk to someone. It made me think about my brother so much. And someone said you were the person who knew most about the case.’

‘Of course there’s no reason why you should be aware of it, but I’ve left the police,’ Konrád told her. ‘I’ve retired. I could point you and your brother to the people who are dealing with the case today. They’d be pleased to hear from you.’

‘You never found the person who did it.’

‘We thought we knew who it was,’ Konrád said. ‘But he always denied it.’

‘That Hjaltalín?’

‘Your brother’s not with you?’

‘No.’

‘They’ll probably want to talk to him again,’ Konrád said. ‘The police, I mean. I could go with him this time.’

‘Yes,’ Herdís said slowly. ‘Except it’s too late.’

‘Too late?’

‘You can’t go anywhere with him.’

‘Why not?’

‘Villi’s dead,’ she said. ‘He died in a car accident.’

Konrád could sense her distress.

‘He was only thirty-four. He... he would have been forty this year.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Konrád said. It sounded inadequate. He groped around for some way of offering more sympathy. ‘Terrible things, car accidents.’

‘It all came back to me when the body turned up on the glacier,’ Herdís said. ‘Villi’s story about the man he saw by the tanks on Öskjuhlíd — the man who threatened to kill him.’

The boys spent a lot of time playing on Öskjuhlíd that winter. They had watched the building of the new bowling alley overlooking the Valur stadium, and used the construction site as a fort, skirmishing with swords and shields among the grey concrete walls and steel reinforcement bars. Now that the alley had opened, they hung around inside, watching people bowling, and if anyone had money they would have a go on the arcade games or buy themselves chips with ketchup. When they got tired of that, they would go down to the old quarry or walk out to Nauthólsvík Cove to watch the kayakers or the occasional weirdo swimming in the sea.

That February evening Villi was alone. He looked in at the bowling alley and watched the players for a while but, having no real interest in the sport, he didn’t stick around long. His mum had warned him not to be late because kids his age weren’t allowed out after eight o’clock, and it was already after the curfew when he left the flat. He wandered up the hill, hardly aware of his surroundings, in low spirits because his handball team, Valur, had just lost an important game. The cold didn’t bother him as he was warmly dressed in a thick anorak, woollen hat and gloves. Seeing the hot-water tanks in the moonlight, he headed towards them. He didn’t mind being alone. Although he had good friends and liked nothing better than playing with them, he was also perfectly content with his own company.

The tanks loomed against the sky like the towers of a deserted castle, wide-bellied and obsolete. They were marked down for demolition, to make way for a modern geothermal heating system. The old tanks, eight of them, formed a circle on the crown of the hill, and it was possible to walk between them into a central space, floored with concrete and littered with scrap metal, such as the wreck of a stolen bicycle that was now beyond repair. Each tank had a ladder attached, leading to the roof, but the lowest rung was more than two metres off the ground, which meant another ladder was needed to reach it. The boys had been resourceful enough to acquire one and some of them had climbed right to the top. Villi had once gone all the way up himself but was terribly afraid of heights and wouldn’t ever want to do it again. The tank had a sloping roof and he’d had the horrible sensation that he was constantly sliding down it. Some of the other boys, who didn’t suffer from vertigo, had strutted around on top, walking along the very edge or sitting there with their legs dangling in the air. A few even jumped between the tanks, but he would never in his life dare to do that.

Crude graffiti had been sprayed all over the blank canvas provided by the walls, including a clumsy drawing of a cock, which always made the boys giggle.

Villi walked into the circle formed by the tanks and lay down on his back in the middle, gazing up at the sky. He glimpsed the moon in the gap between the huge, dark shapes and watched as it gradually passed out of sight, while the big revolving light on top of one of the tanks appeared and disappeared in turn. His mum had told him it was a beacon for planes landing at the domestic airport on Vatnsmýri, at the foot of the hill. Its green and yellow beam sliced through the night above the city with a slow, steady rhythm, round and round, like the slightly fast second hand on a clock.