Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - I Remember You

The question that he now faced was undeniably unusual: why had a complete stranger in Flateyri mentioned Benni by name in her suicide note? It didn’t look as if there would be any straightforward answer, but he would find it. There was always an explanation, no matter how strange, and he just had to go ahead and search for it. Therefore, in the end he’d decided to go back to the hospital, get the files from Dagný and try to work this out immediately, rather than letting it hang over him until tomorrow. It was out of the question that he’d be able to sit back down in front of the television or do anything else – not tonight, and probably not any time soon.

He took off his jacket and checked if Halla’s medical files had been sent over. Freyr had been given the job of going over her medical history for the autopsy report, and all the files were kept at the healthcare clinic in her home town, Flateyri. Amid the day’s bustle he’d forgotten to check whether they’d been sent over to Ísafjörður, although they must have been, considering how close the two places were. And indeed they had; a thick envelope marked with his name waited on the secretary’s abandoned desk, and he grabbed it after leaving behind a message on a little slip of paper saying that he’d taken the records. He didn’t want a tongue-lashing from the grouchy secretary, so he hoped she would be satisfied with the message.

The administrative wing of the hospital was like a graveyard. He met no one on his way to his office and felt relieved; he wouldn’t have to explain what he was up to so late in the evening, especially given that he wasn’t on duty. Just to be sure, he shut the door behind him so that the room’s light wasn’t visible if anyone passed by. When he finally sat down behind his desk, he felt like a burglar.

Halla had lived her whole life in Flateyri, meaning her entire medical history came from one place. Apart from the death certificate that was yet to be issued, the records covered the woman’s life from the cradle to the grave. If she’d ever suffered from any mental problems, that kind of information would be found here; that is, if her doctor had noticed and recorded it. He decided to start at the beginning and read each page carefully so as not to miss anything. He wanted to find out whether her mental health had been defective and search for an explanation for her strange note. His best theory was that a possible mental disorder had started to manifest itself around the time that Benni had gone missing, and that media coverage of the disappearance had merged with her delusions. It wouldn’t be unusual. He also recalled Halla’s husband mentioning that it had been around three years since Halla’s increased religious interest had started to become noticeable. That also fitted in with this time frame. Benni had disappeared a little over three years ago.

But no such information could be found in the endless list of ordinary ailments and annual flu jabs that marked the milestones in Halla’s medical history. Her tonsils were removed when she was eleven, she broke her arm once on a skiing trip, went through three normal pregnancies and had her children, had one stillbirth, cut herself on a knife, and more along those lines. During the past five years her visits to the doctor had increased, but all of them were related to high blood pressure and cholesterol issues for which she was being treated. There was nothing that could be associated in any way with mental illness. The one entry connected with mental health was from when she was thirteen. Her mother had taken her to the doctor because she thought her daughter was behaving peculiarly; she was frightened and unsociable and not entirely herself. The doctor’s conclusion was that her condition had to do with puberty, which had just begun, and although Freyr read the report several times over there was nothing to indicate that there was anything unusual about the diagnosis, though these days this kind of thing would be followed up more thoroughly than it had been then. It did catch his attention, however, that this visit had occurred in the same year and at the same time as the break-in at the primary school; the doctor’s report was dated December 1953. In order to confirm this he looked in the old police report from Dagný’s files, and he was right: the break-in had occurred at the end of November the same year. He couldn’t see any connection, but the coincidence was interesting nonetheless. A break-in at the primary school and Halla suffers from depression; a break-in at the preschool under very similar circumstances and Halla kills herself. The connection wasn’t exactly crystal clear, but it was still something to ponder.

When it became obvious that there was nothing more to learn from the medical files, Freyr ran through the papers from Dagný again. These had much more substance, as they were formal police reports and other files that had been written in the knowledge that others would be reading them later. He ran his eyes over Dagný’s summary of the contents of Halla’s handbag, which had been lying on the floor of the church, but which she’d overlooked the first time she’d been at the scene. The bag contained nothing unusual: a make-up bag, a wallet, a little hairbrush, a packet of ibuprofen, some chewing gum, keys, and a mobile phone. However, a note concerning the mobile phone stood out. Its memory was full of messages that all said the same thing: Find me. Find Benni. The sender’s number was blocked and Dagný’s attempts to find it out had been fruitless. The newest messages in the inbox were three months old, which made it difficult to know whether the sender had stopped their harassment or whether the inbox was simply full up and refused to accept any more. Freyr read this information over and over again but only became more confused each time; there was a particular accord between these words and the letter that Halla had left behind. Yet it was difficult to base such a connection on four words. Freyr felt his heart beat faster at seeing his son’s name a second time in connection with this suicide, and his headache flared. He put the paper down and tried to compose himself.

He turned to the class photograph that had been damaged during the break-in. The children were arranged in three rows; they stared straight ahead, all with rather befuddled expressions, as if the photographer had snapped the photo by surprise. Naturally, the expressions of the children whose faces the vandal had obliterated weren’t visible, but Freyr didn’t imagine they’d have been any more unusual in appearance or their smiles any bigger than those of their classmates. Most of the children were dressed in their best clothes; the boys in shirts and ties and the girls in skirts and cardigans. The only exception was a short boy standing at the end of the middle row. He was neither dressed up nor wearing a look of surprise. He seemed extremely sad; his big black eyes weren’t staring straight ahead, but away from the group, and as a result he seemed out of place and isolated. He also stood a bit apart from the others, not shoulder to shoulder with everyone else, like the rest, strengthening Freyr’s hunch that he was either new to the class or was an outsider to the group for different reasons. His clothes looked scruffy; his trousers were too short and his jumper frayed, worn and badly fitting. Again Freyr felt irritated at having just a photocopy to hand, since the names of the children beneath the picture were unreadable. He only had a handwritten list of the names of the ones whose faces the vandal had obliterated from the photo. Since he was familiar with none of them but Halla, he wanted to know who the others in this class were, since hopefully some of them still lived in Ísafjörður. He didn’t think it was entirely impossible that a former student might provide him with information that hadn’t found its way into the police reports. Maybe the children knew who had done the deed back then, even if they hadn’t informed the police or the school.