Arnaldur Indridason - Strange Shores

Ezra looked up.

‘You come in here claiming to have dug him up. You say you’ve seen scratch marks on the coffin lid. You put his teeth on my kitchen counter.’

‘I’m sorry if — ’ But Erlendur was not allowed to finish.

‘That was the first time it really hit home what I’d done.’ Ezra looked back at the picture. ‘You must utterly despise me.’

‘It doesn’t matter what I think,’ said Erlendur.

‘You say that now. But if you hadn’t haunted me like a ghost from the past, I’d never have dredged all this up.’

‘I can believe — ’

Ezra interrupted again. ‘You’re the stubbornest bastard I’ve ever met.’

Erlendur did not know how to take this.

‘Anyway, I’ll be dead soon and that’ll be an end to it,’ said Ezra.

‘I can believe it’s been hard for you to live with,’ said Erlendur. ‘An honest man like yourself.’

‘Yes, well, so much for honesty,’ said Ezra. ‘I’ve tried to do my best, tried to atone for it in my own way. And you mustn’t forget what Jakob did to Matthildur. There are times when I justify my crime. I blame Jakob. Then I feel better for a while. But it never lasts.’

‘As I said, it’s not the first extraordinary story of survival I’ve heard,’ said Erlendur. ‘People who’ve been written off as dead. Man has a phenomenal instinct to live.’

‘I’ve often wished he’d simply died in the shipwreck,’ Ezra went on. ‘It would have been. . it would have been simpler, purer.’

‘Life’s never simple,’ said Erlendur. ‘That’s the first thing we learn. It’s never straightforward.’

‘Are you going to take action?’ asked Ezra.

Their eyes met.

‘Not unless you want me to.’

‘You’ll leave it up to me?’

‘It’s not my concern. I just wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery.’

‘But you’re a policeman. Isn’t it your duty. .?’

‘One’s duty can be complicated.’

‘Not that it really matters to me what you do. Though a few people around here would revise their opinion of me, not that I really care. But I’d be grateful if the story of Matthildur’s fate could be left unchanged. There’s a certain poetry to it. Though it’s a damned lie, there’s something in the idea of her striding over the Hraevarskörd Pass that I’d like to be allowed to live on in people’s memories. Unless they’re all dead by now.’

‘I don’t suppose anyone’s asked after Jakob in all these years?’

‘No. You’re the only one.’

‘And he never told you what he did with her?’

‘No.’

‘So you still have no idea?’

‘No.’

‘If you’d been able to save his life, might he have told you then?’

‘No, it wouldn’t have made any difference,’ said Ezra. ‘I’m convinced of that. Even if I’d helped him, he’d never have let on.’

‘Jakob seems to have been rallying when you put him in the coffin,’ Erlendur continued, choosing his words with care.

‘He was dead as far as everyone else was concerned,’ said Ezra. ‘I just put him in his coffin.’

The justification sounded as if it had been rehearsed countless times in the intervening years. Ezra got to his feet and looked out of the window at the moor which loomed against the sky, pristine and untouched.

‘I sometimes wonder,’ he said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t mean him to live, but if he’d shown any remorse, the slightest hint of remorse or regret. . would things have gone differently? Would I have saved his life?’

Erlendur didn’t know what to say.

‘I’ve had to live with it ever since,’ Ezra whispered to the window. ‘At times the shame’s been almost more than I could bear.’

Hrund had been discharged from hospital. It was evening as Erlendur drove up to the house and spied her back in her habitual place at the window. She smiled at him and this time came to the front door to welcome him. Joining her in the sitting room, Erlendur asked after her health. She said she had come home that morning and had nothing to grumble about.

‘Any new discoveries?’ she asked, bringing him some freshly made coffee. ‘Any news about Matthildur?’

Erlendur was uncertain how much to share with her about the fates of Matthildur and Jakob, or Ezra’s act of vengeance after the shipwreck of 1949. He would rather gloss over the business of his grave robbery as well. And since he was concealing these facts, he might as well keep quiet about others too. So he gave her a heavily edited account of his meetings with Ezra. Hrund sat and listened without comment until it came to what concerned her most.

‘I hope we can keep this between us,’ said Erlendur. ‘So it doesn’t go any further.’

‘Of course.’

‘Ezra’s convinced Jakob killed Matthildur.’

Hrund regarded him impassively.

‘He has no proof,’ said Erlendur. ‘But he told me that Jakob had confessed to the killing in his hearing. Jakob acted out of jealousy and a desire for revenge. Some would call it a crime of passion. Matthildur was going to leave Jakob for Ezra, but he began to suspect they were up to no good and followed her to Ezra’s house one night. He saw everything and couldn’t take it — couldn’t take the betrayal.’

Hrund’s expression was still unreadable.

‘Jakob invented the story about Matthildur going to your mother’s house in Reydarfjördur and getting caught in the storm. As it was, she never left home.’

‘Oh my God!’ whispered Hrund at last.

‘I have no reason to disbelieve Ezra,’ said Erlendur.

‘The evil bastard.’

Erlendur described how he had gradually coaxed Ezra into telling him what he knew, how he and Matthildur had been in love, how time had stopped for Ezra when she went missing. He told her about Ezra’s encounters with Jakob after she vanished, first in the graveyard, then at Jakob’s house, where he had confessed to killing her.

‘How did you get him to talk?’ Hrund asked.

Erlendur shrugged. ‘He seemed ready to unburden himself,’ he said, hoping this was not too great a lie.

He wouldn’t dream of admitting the pressure he had put on Ezra to make him cooperate. Indeed, he rather regretted it, especially given the cost. Erlendur was not proud of the lengths he had gone to. He was worried about digging up Jakob’s grave but even more about how he had treated Ezra. He had bludgeoned the old man into confessing and now he could only pity him. He might himself be driven by an insatiable compulsion, an obsession with uncovering the truth, but why couldn’t Ezra have been left in peace with his secrets? He was no hardened criminal, no danger to his community. When they parted, Ezra had said it didn’t matter to him what Erlendur chose to do with his discoveries, but Erlendur knew better.

Hard on the heels of revelation came anger.

‘It’s hardly possible to imagine a worse end,’ Erlendur said.

‘Do you think I don’t know that?’ Ezra snarled back. ‘Do you think it hasn’t preyed on my mind every day? You needn’t start preaching to me on that score.’

He turned to glare at Erlendur.

‘You can leave now,’ he said. ‘Bugger off and leave me alone. I never want to set eyes on you again. I don’t have long left and I don’t want to have to see you.’

‘I can understand — ’ Erlendur was not permitted to finish.

‘Out!’ said Ezra, raising his voice. ‘Get out, I say! For once in your life do as I ask. Get out!’

Erlendur stood up and went to the kitchen door.

‘I don’t want us to part in anger,’ he said.

‘I don’t give a damn what you want,’ said Ezra. ‘Just bugger off!’

So they parted. Erlendur retreated, though he was unhappy leaving him in such a fragile state. There was nothing he could do for Ezra right now, yet in spite of the old man’s pleas he intended to come back the following day to check if he had recovered.