Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - I Remember You

With his mobile phone in his hand, Freyr continued to stare at the northern lights, which had spread out even further and now covered most of the sky. The green colour fascinated him in some incomprehensible way; he had never pondered colours much and didn’t even have a favourite one. But there was something about this greenish flickering in the sky that captured his attention, and like everything else that day, the colour prompted a familiar feeling of sorrow. Sorrow over what had happened and what could have happened. He pushed aside all the ‘what ifs’ that would never find an answer and was surprised at how hard it was turning out to be, to follow the advice he gave to patients who remained stuck in if only s. Until now he’d been able to hold these kind of thoughts at bay, largely by simply not letting his mind drift that way and refusing to allow regret to gain the upper hand. He was realistic enough to know that it would only have made things worse to be honest with Sara. On top of the sorrow that was already overwhelming her he would have added bitter anger, which would have done nothing to improve either her situation or his. The truth wouldn’t have changed Benni’s fate. So there was no justification to increase Sara’s burden or take the risk that she might seek revenge, which could have led to his being suspended from work or even fired.

By this rationale he’d managed to live more or less at peace with his own dishonesty for nearly three years. But after listening to the recording, this shaky reasoning had collapsed and guilt burst forth. He was probably reading more into the soft voice in the faint recording than he should, but it didn’t matter; he was convinced that his son expected him to come clean. Perhaps the point of Benni’s strange appearance was to help Sara and enable her to get on with her life. And in order for this to happen, Freyr needed to tell her the truth.

The phone rang and he answered it without looking to see who it was. He simply stared, hypnotized, at the green colour that refused to stay still long enough in his eyes for him to remember or work out what meaning the colour had or to what memory it was connected. ‘Hello.’

It was Dagný. ‘Lárus is dead.’ She waited for Freyr to say something, then continued when all she heard was silence. ‘He was found at home. The police in Reykjavík called and informed me. I don’t remember whether I told you, but I asked them to help find him.’

‘What happened?’ Freyr shut his eyes in order to tear himself from the aerial display and focus on the conversation. ‘They don’t know, but it looks as if he ingested poison. Maybe accidentally, maybe deliberately, though that has to be considered unlikely.’

‘Do they know what type of poison it was?’ The question actually didn’t have anything to do with the case, but Freyr needed time to digest the news and to think.

‘I didn’t ask. I’ll probably get better information tomorrow. They’ll call back for sure; I didn’t go into any detail when I asked them to find him. It took me so much by surprise that I didn’t have a decent story ready, I just told them that I needed to reach him regarding an old case for which he could possibly provide information, and that he wasn’t answering either his home phone or his mobile. I didn’t need to explain any further, since they just assumed that the man simply didn’t want to be contacted.’

‘Was his back scarred?’

‘No one’s said so. I assume that it still hasn’t come to light. The police don’t undress people; that’s left to those who handle the dead.’ Dagný sighed softly. ‘It certainly won’t reduce the barrage of questions waiting for me.’

Freyr had nothing to add to this; he wasn’t in any condition to consider what it meant, and whether all speculation about the relationship between this doomed group of friends and the disappearance of his son was now invalid. Now there was no one left who could inform them of this first-hand, it felt pointless to ponder the matter further. Maybe that was a good thing. Until he’d got dragged into this he’d felt all right; not great, granted, but he could make it through the days without any particular mental anguish. But now it was as if he were returning to the same emotional rollercoaster as he’d been on when Benni had disappeared.

Freyr said goodbye, his tone of voice so sad and distracted that Dagný asked how he was feeling before ending their call. But instead of taking a load off his mind and telling her about the recording, he said she needn’t worry, he was just tired. He didn’t feel able to describe recent events well enough for her not to think that he’d completely lost the plot. That story would have to wait until he could hand her his phone and allow her to listen to Benni’s distant voice. A voice that Freyr had managed to capture despite the fact that it was made without vocal cords, tongue, central nervous system or any of the other things needed to form words. But in the sky there was nothing evident that Freyr considered necessary to ignite the northern lights. Who was he to judge what was possible and what was not?

In order to guarantee himself peace and quiet for what remained of the evening, Freyr was careful to turn off the ringer on his phone before he stuck it in his jacket pocket. Despite his sadness he smiled at the futility of this gesture; almost no one called him after work apart from Sara. But better to be safe than sorry. Freyr stood up and stared for the final time at the northern lights before setting off for home, still certain that the colour green mattered. A great deal.

The area was like a graveyard. He’d chosen to go there precisely for the quiet, but suddenly he felt uncomfortable at seeing no one else there. His every exhalation was accompanied by a hazy cloud that vanished almost as soon as it appeared, but in the second that the haze passed before his eyes and evaporated Freyr thought he noticed movement in places where there was none. He quickened his pace but refrained from running, which he thought would be a sure sign that he’d lost all control of the situation. What, in fact, did he have to fear? If the unbelievable proved to be true and Benni’s spirit was haunting him, that could only be good. Benni was his child, no matter whether he was alive or dead. Freyr wasn’t especially concerned by all the medium’s talk about the dead growing malevolent over time. And even if they did, what would be the worst that could happen? That he would die? He had no desire to sleep the long sleep but had to admit that he didn’t fear it either; his life wasn’t worth much now and his future didn’t look very exciting. This simple fact made him stop. He looked up the alley that lay ahead; the streetlights and the strange glow from the sky weren’t able to illuminate it properly, and long shadows stretched up it from the streetlights as if they were pointing him to the shortest yet most hazardous way home.

Freyr was startled by laughter from a solitary great black-backed gull. His heart made its presence known with a dull pounding and he forced himself to breathe calmly in the hope of regaining his composure. Standing stock-still, he peered ahead, trying to spot any movement, but saw nothing except the deathly still buildings staring at each other with big black eyes. Freyr cursed himself for having felt the need for peace and quiet and wished he’d gone through the centre of town instead. Again he heard suppressed laughter, now more clearly. It sounded desolate, originating in malice or pleasure over others’ failures. Even though Freyr could never have described Benni’s laughter, could not even recall it in his mind, he knew that this was not his son. In his short life, Benni had never made such a spiteful sound. Freyr looked in both directions and wondered whether he should avoid the shadowy alley and walk along the sea, or take the next street along, which was much wider and brighter. He didn’t expect to be attacked, but neither did he want to go looking for trouble, and he wanted least of all to come any closer to the source of the laughter. Without pondering it any longer he chose to walk along the sea, turned right and set off slowly.