Арнальдур Индридасон - The Darkness Knows

‘That’s him,’ the repeat offender had said, the instant he laid eyes on Hjaltalín in the line-up.

‘Are you sure?’ he was asked.

‘Yes.’

‘You don’t want to take another look? We’ve got plenty of time.’

‘No, that’s him,’ said the witness.

Hjaltalín hadn’t been allowed to go home. Instead, he had been taken to the cells after his statutory phone call to a lawyer. He had protested at this treatment, pointing out that he’d come into the station voluntarily and that the whole thing was a terrible mistake. The witness was adamant, however, and provided an exact time for the altercation between the two men. Hjaltalín was asked where he had been during the relevant period. He said he couldn’t remember. When the question was subsequently put to him again and he was asked if he could provide an alibi, he had given them the name of his girlfriend, saying that they’d been at his place together. The police had got in touch with the girl straight away and Konrád had interviewed her at the police station. She worked in one of Hjaltalín’s clothes shops and had been seeing him for a while. Although she confirmed her boyfriend’s story, Konrád had detected an underlying nervousness. He’d reminded himself that she hadn’t been expecting to be interviewed at the police station on Hverfisgata about the high-profile missing persons case, possibly even murder, that was all over the papers, TV and radio. She’d had no previous run-ins with the police either, and it was clear from her confusion that she hardly knew what had hit her. But there was something else going on there. The elastic hairband she kept twisting between her fingers. The way she avoided eye contact and kept her gaze fixed on the door, asking repeatedly if they were done. The embarrassed smile. After two hours of questioning, Konrád had succeeding in prising out of her the admission that although she had been at Hjaltalín’s place, she had gone out at the same time as him. She had no idea of his movements after that. The timing was consistent with the alleged encounter in the car park. Hjaltalín had called and asked her to say that she’d been with him all evening — in case anyone ever asked, which he said was unlikely.

‘When?’ Konrád had demanded, his eyes on the elastic band the girl was fidgeting with.

‘When what?’

‘When did he call and ask you to do that?’

‘Er, several days later.’

‘After the search for Sigurvin had begun?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you sure? Was it after the search had begun? This is very important.’

‘Yes, it was after everyone started looking for him.’

‘Where did he say he was going?’ Konrád asked. ‘Where was Hjaltalín going that evening?’

‘To meet a friend.’

Konrád stared at her. ‘A friend?’

‘Yes.’

‘Sigurvin?’

‘I don’t know. Some friend. I didn’t hear properly.’

The significance of the fact that Hjaltalín had asked his girlfriend to lie for him after the search for Sigurvin had begun wasn’t missed by his lawyer. He demanded that his client be released from custody on the grounds that Hjaltalín had suspected he would be blamed for Sigurvin’s disappearance, because of their previous dealings and the bad blood that was known to exist between them. In other words, he had acted to protect himself. Admittedly, it had been a clumsy, foolish reaction, but only human and understandable in the circumstances. If Hjaltalín had asked the girl to lie for him before Sigurvin’s disappearance had been discovered, that would have been different. In that case, the assumption would have been that he’d had prior knowledge of Sigurvin’s fate.

The girl was able to give them a fairly precise time frame and, going by what she said, it was perfectly possible that Hjaltalín could have gone straight to Sigurvin’s office and met him there. At this point, Hjaltalín had altered his story. He now remembered having encountered Sigurvin in the car park, but claimed that afterwards he had gone to see a woman whose identity he couldn’t reveal because she was married.

Konrád stared at the Bible lying on the desk in the cell, and wondered if Hjaltalín had been reading it and whether he knew the words of the gospel of St Luke, chapter sixteen, verse ten: ‘Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.’

‘I read it every day,’ Hjaltalín said, following Konrád’s gaze. ‘I take great comfort from it.’

Hjaltalín appeared to have fallen asleep. His eyes were closed and his breathing had slowed. Konrád sat quietly beside his bed, reflecting that the man couldn’t have long to live. He looked so weak, and the pallor of his almost chalk-white skin seemed a clear sign that his illness was gaining the upper hand.

‘Are you thinking back to those days?’ the threadbare voice whispered, though Hjaltalín didn’t open his eyes. ‘I often relive what it was like in prison. It wasn’t a good time.’

‘You seemed to take it in your stride,’ Konrád said. ‘They want to know how you transported Sigurvin’s body to the glacier. You were arrested two weeks after he vanished, which would have given you ample time to dispose of him.’

Hjaltalín opened his eyes and contemplated the ceiling for a while. Then he pushed himself upright, very slowly, until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. He buried his face in his fingers for a moment and groaned, then rubbed a hand over his hairless scalp and looked Konrád in the eye.

‘I’ve never set foot on a glacier in my life,’ he whispered weakly. ‘You have to stop this, Konrád — you and your mates in the police. I haven’t got much time left.’

‘You used to own a four-by-four.’

‘So did everyone else. The police can’t do this to me. You were supposed to solve the case, Konrád. Look what you’ve done to me. You might as well have killed me. I haven’t had a proper life since then. Everyone looks at me like I’m a murderer. They all think I killed him. They stare at me and... What do you think it’s been like, Konrád? What do you think it’s been like, having to live with this? This hell on earth. It was your job to find the person who did it, you useless shit. How could you have been so fucking useless? You were all useless, the whole lot of you. A bunch of fucking losers.’

Seeing how exhausted Hjaltalín was, Konrád endured his tirade in silence. He felt sorry for the sick man. Knew what a tough time he’d had ever since he was first arrested on suspicion of murder.

‘The woman you said you were with — the married woman you refused to name...’

‘She’s not important.’

‘Because she never existed,’ Konrád said. ‘Why do you persist with this bullshit? You fell out with Sigurvin; you threatened him, followed him and spied on him, waited for the right moment, then attacked him up by the tanks on Öskjuhlíd.’

Hjaltalín shot him a glance. ‘You said you believed me.’

Konrád rose to his feet. He could see no point in prolonging this encounter. ‘I said I wasn’t entirely sure. I shouldn’t have said that. And you shouldn’t have taken it seriously. You’re still the only person in the picture. Nothing’s changed. And your extraordinary attempt to flee the country has done nothing to help your cause.’

‘But you said it.’

Thirty years ago, Hjaltalín had told Konrád repeatedly that they should direct their attention elsewhere. But the police had reckoned that they’d exhausted all other avenues. All the evidence pointed to Hjaltalín. Once, after a long day, Konrád had been so tired and out of sorts that he had raised the possibility, in Hjaltalín’s hearing, that the man could in fact be innocent; that maybe CID hadn’t done enough to investigate other lines of inquiry. Hjaltalín had seized on this.