Viktor Ingolfsson - The Flatey Enigma

Friday, June 3, 1960

Kjartan woke up to repeated cockcrows from the village below. It took him some time to remember where he was and identify the sound. The bed lay under a sloping ceiling, and opposite the headrest a color photograph had been blue-tacked to the wall. The picture was probably of a Norwegian fjord with a big modern ferry set against a backdrop of forested hills and cliffs.

He heard the cockcrow again and knew it was time to get up, but he was paralyzed by a heavy sense of dread. It was a familiar feeling that sometimes hit him at the beginning of a day, particularly when he was forced to venture into the unknown. But he tried to bite the bullet and shake it off. His shyness and social phobias were the two things that plagued him the most in life. He therefore did his utmost to avoid situations that brought him into too much contact with strangers. But now that he’d been saddled with this assignment that took him from one stranger to another, he had no say in the matter.

Three fat bluebottles buzzed against the windowpane by the top of his bed. He stood up and gazed through the glass. Two kids were rounding up a black sheep and a lamb in a field on the western side of the island. They were within earshot, and their voices could be heard calling when the ewe turned against them and refused to be led. The sky was slightly overcast but sunny.

Kjartan got dressed and climbed down the almost vertical staircase from the loft. A strong fragrance of coffee wafted through the kitchen, and the mistress of the household was hanging up washing on the line in the level yard in front of the house. She was dressed in the same woolen clothes she’d worn the day before and was wearing her striped apron. A girl of about eight years of age stood by her side and handed her pegs, which she fished out of an old can of paint.

Kjartan grabbed the pot of coffee on the stove and poured himself a cup. He then walked outside and looked down at the village. The tide was coming in, and the cluster of houses were reflected in the sea that was filling the cove below the embankment. A number of inhabitants could be seen wandering between the houses, and no one seemed to be in a hurry. Those whose paths crossed paused to chat, both young and old. It was more the hens that seemed to be in a hurry as they darted between the gardens of the houses. Despite the sunshine, there was a breeze and it was quite chilly.

“Good morning, young man,” Ingibjorg said when she noticed Kjartan had come out.

“Good morning.”

“We still have dry weather.”

“Hmm, yeah.”

Ingibjorg finished hanging up the last garment.

“We’re still far from the haymaking season, of course, but it would be good to be able to dry the eiderdown in the sunshine,” she said.

“Hmm, really? Where is Grimur anyway?” Kjartan asked.

“They went out at the crack of dawn to check on the seal nets. They should be back by noon.”

“Right.”

“Grimur put up your notice before he left.”

“Good.”

“And the telephone exchange will open at ten so you can ring your boss, the district magistrate.”

She turned to the girl. “Thanks for your help, Rosa darling. Run along and play now.”

The girl put the can down and skipped away.

Ingibjorg disappeared into the house with the empty washing basket in her hands.

Kjartan sat on an old whale bone that lay by the gable of the house and sipped on his coffee. Visibility was good in the clear weather, and he felt he could see a white painted house on the mainland to the north, although it could also have been the remains of some snow.

The screeching of cliff birds reached him from Hafnarey and fused with the surrounding bleating of sheep. The salted scent of the sea lingered in the breeze.

Ingibjorg came out again and had removed her apron now, put on a tasseled cap, and draped a knitted shawl over her shoulders.

“I’ll walk you down to the telephone exchange now,” she said cheerfully.

They followed the path to the road and headed down toward the village. Ingibjorg walked a lot slower than what he was used to and occasionally halted completely to look at something or chat with the people they bumped into. He waited patiently and responded to the greetings of the people Ingibjorg introduced him to. But he was slightly unnerved by the way people brazenly stared at him as soon as they started nattering with the district officer’s wife.

Finally they reached the co-operative building. There was a space on one of the store’s doors that was obviously regularly used as a notice board. Some rusty old drawing pins were stuck to it, and a notice advertising the Whitsunday mass next week had recently been put up. Beside it was the notice that Kjartan had typed and stuck up with four new drawing pins. Ingibjorg paused to read it and nodded with a smile, as if to confirm it was all in good order.

The telephone exchange was in a one-story building above a stone basement, directly opposite the co-op.

White letters on a blue sign over the door read Post amp; Telegraph Office, and inside there was a small hall, with coat hangers and a small bench, that led into a small reception room. A few gray radio receivers hung on one wall, while on the other there was a cabinet full of compartments for the sorting of mail. A bulky safe stood on a plinth in one corner.

A small, delicate woman welcomed them with a smile. She was wearing trousers and a sweater, with long hair woven into a thick braid.

“This is Stina; she’s the head of the telephone exchange and the post office,” Ingibjorg said to Kjartan. Then she explained the reason for their visit: “The assistant magistrate needs to phone his superiors. Are you open yet, Stina?”

Ingibjorg sat in front of the desk and signaled Kjartan to join her.

“I’m just opening now. I just have to turn on the generator and switch on the exchange,” Stina answered, slipping on some old work gloves and disappearing behind the door.

“That’s the only electricity we have here,” Ingibjorg explained a bit further, “the energy this generator produces. There’s actually another generator in the fish factory for the fish processing, but it’s rarely used.”

Within a few moments they heard the muffled murmur of an engine and the smiling lady reappeared. She slipped on a bulky set of black headphones with an attached microphone and turned on the contraption by flicking a few switches. She waited a moment for the lamps to warm up and then said loudly and clearly: “Stykkisholmur, Stykkisholmur, Flatey radio calling.” She repeated this several times.

She then put down the headphones and said, “Stykkisholmur will answer in a moment. He sometimes likes to keep you waiting, just to give people the impression that he’s really busy.”

She turned out to be right. A blast of static soon erupted, and a male voice answered through the speaker on the wall: “Flatey radio, Stykkisholmur answering.”

“Good morning, Stykkisholmur. We have a call for the district magistrate in Patreksfjordur.”

“One moment,” the voice answered, followed by a silence. Stina and Ingibjorg solemnly waited without saying a word.

Kjartan looked out the window facing the village and saw two men standing by the notice in the co-op store. They seemed to be reading it with great interest and then stuck their heads together and looked in the direction of the telephone exchange.

“Flatey radio, Stykkisholmur. We have the district magistrate of Patreksfjordur on the line.”

“Go ahead,” Stina said, pointing at a black receiver on the desk in front of Kjartan.

He picked up the phone. “Hello, hello. Kjartan in Flatey here.”

The voice at the other end of the line was faint. “Yes, hello, how’s the investigation going?”