Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - I Remember You

The box sat in the middle of his desk, which was otherwise nearly empty. Freyr couldn’t stand clutter and couldn’t concentrate when everything was a mess, which Sara had never understood. He suddenly recalled how he’d been irritated by things that he now saw hardly mattered, and he longed to pick up the phone and ask Sara’s forgiveness for his behaviour while everything had still been fine. Long ago he’d realized that it was much simpler to believe that everything had been all right between them before Benni disappeared. The tragedy and sorrow that had followed simply overshadowed everything else. If he looked honestly into his heart, he knew that their relationship would probably have ground down slowly but surely, in the end leaving them wanting nothing to do with each other, even if Benni hadn’t gone missing; the only difference would have been that they each would have had half-custody of their son, instead of both having full custody of their separate memories of him. Freyr decided not to call Sara; there was no point digging up details from the past that made no difference in the present. Or at least he hoped not.

As he opened the box he was met with the smell of old paper that had lain undisturbed in closed containers. It was remarkable that these medical reports should still exist; for a time they’d obviously been important sources of information on the patients concerned, but after these patients had died their importance diminished rapidly. He took one stack of paper after another out of the box before placing it on the floor. He opened the first report and began reading.

‘You were so mysterious on the phone that I decided to come straight over.’ Dagný had declined Freyr’s invitation to hang up her jacket before she sat down. He understood why; he’d opened the window wide when the dust and odour of the papers had started to get on his nerves, and he’d been so absorbed in the contents of the files that he hadn’t noticed it was as cold inside as out. Now that he was a bit calmer he also felt the cold draught and shut the window.

‘I hope you didn’t misunderstand me and think that I’ve managed to tie all these threads together. Far from it.’ Freyr sat down. ‘On the other hand, I did find one or two curious details that reveal unexpected connections.’

‘Let’s hear it.’ Dagný unzipped her jacket now. She leaned over the desk and stared at the old reports, before wrinkling her nose. ‘Is that smell coming from the papers?’

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. But I can put them back in the box if you want – I pretty much remember everything that’s in them.’

Dagný declined the offer. ‘If my suspicions are correct, this case is going to look very strange, so it’s just as well that I have the papers here. I’m not saying I doubt your word; it’s just that I’ve got to see it with my own eyes if it turns out to be something weird.’

Freyr left the papers lying on the table. ‘That’s precisely the right word to describe it: weird.’ He pushed some documents aside in search of the first report he wanted to tell her about. He found it and handed it to her. ‘This is a letter from the school nurse to the hospital’s chief physician in 1952, in which she expresses her concerns about a new student, Bernódus Pjetursson.’

Dagný took the letter, along with a copy of the nurse’s report on the boy. She glanced over the letter. ‘Oh God. That’s horrible.’ She put down both of the papers without reading the report. Freyr didn’t blame her; the descriptions of the boy’s scars didn’t exactly make easy reading. The reason that the nurse had decided to write to the doctor was because two crosses had been carved and burned with a pocket knife and cigarettes on Bernódus’s back.

Freyr picked up the papers. ‘I couldn’t agree more. The boy’s father must have been very, very ill, either from some progressive mental disease or some problem that was initially triggered, when his drinking got out of control. The old teacher said he’d heard that the man blamed the boy for the death of his wife and his other son, and him having marked the child in this way, to my mind, confirms that this could have been the case. Two crosses, two dead loved ones. It’s a terrible tragedy, and you have to wonder whether he didn’t simply murder the boy, although who knows how he then disposed of the body.’

‘I don’t remember being called in for that kind of medical examination at school.’ Dagný crossed her arms and leaned back from the desk, as if wanting to keep herself as far as possible from the horrific reports. ‘I had various vaccinations, but that was it.’

‘The report states that the nurse was asked to speak to and examine the boy. He’d refused to go to his P.E. class and when they once forced him into it he didn’t want to change his clothes, saying that he didn’t have a P.E. kit and refused to take anything other than a pair of lost property shorts. Then he wouldn’t have a shower after the class. He and the shower attendant argued and the kids in the class teased him, winding him up even more and causing a huge disturbance; it all ended up on the school nurse’s desk after the shower attendant removed his clothes by force and pushed him under a shower, to the delight of his classmates. He was ashamed of his back and didn’t want others to see it, so you can imagine how traumatic this was. He was only twelve years old.’

‘And how come nothing was done? This letter was sent a month before the boy disappeared, which meant it would have been possible to intervene and help him.’

‘I don’t know.’ Freyr had been just as angry as Dagný when he’d read the report, but he was calmer now, though overwhelmed by a feeling of sadness at the boy’s fate. Lying on the table was the copy of the class photo that he’d taken from a drawer, and he found himself staring regularly at the boy’s sad black and white image. His position apart from the rest of the group was even more noticeable now that Freyr had discovered his awful misfortune. The withdrawal of love and support from those who were supposed to care most always deeply affected children, and there was little hope of rehabilitation without intervention – which appeared not to have come quickly enough in Bernódus’s case. ‘It was a completely different time then; child protection was much less advanced. Probably some sort of process to help him was set in motion; maybe the authorities here had to contact the child protection authorities in Reykjavík, and that chain of communication took place at a completely different speed than it would do today.’

‘That’s no excuse.’ Dagný bit her lip. ‘She says that he claimed it was an accident, but she rules that out. Was she right?’

‘Yes, it’s out of the question.’ Freyr took back the report. ‘The wounds are a combination of knife cuts and cigarette burns. He couldn’t have made them himself, according to her description.’ He handed Dagný the papers and pointed at the relevant part. ‘She got him to directly admit that his father had done it, after ruling out other explanations by asking him over and over and evaluating his reaction each time. This woman was really excellent. She was able to coax him out of his jumper and get him to open up, without expecting him to tell her everything immediately. Not everyone’s able to reach children who have suffered that kind of violence. The saddest thing is that her efforts came to nothing.’

‘Are these reports all about him?’ Dagný pointed at the stacks of paper, which Freyr had put in order of importance.

‘No. I also gathered data about others involved in this case and learned various things. It’s remarkable that no one’s put it all together, but that’s probably because it all happened over such a length of time.’ He reached for the bottom stack. ‘I received an e-mail just now from the doctor who autopsied Halla. I asked him to find out whether the other two classmates, Jón and Védís, also had scars in the form of a cross on their backs. It’s easier for him as a forensic pathologist to get hold of that kind of information.’