Yrsa Sigurðardóttir - I Remember You

Freyr searched the woman for signs of life. He ran his hands down the back of her neck. It was uninjured. He asked Veigar to pass him a knife, and used it to cut away the woman’s clothing. With her pale back exposed, he examined the remainder of her spine, which appeared undamaged, and couldn’t find any other injuries. Her breathing was irregular and rattly. ‘Help me turn her over, carefully.’ Veigar hurriedly obeyed and together they turned the victim onto her back. Veigar started in surprise when he saw her injuries. Bloody red crosses had been cut into her face, and she could count herself lucky that she hadn’t lost her eyes, the cuts had come so close to them. Freyr reached for Veigar’s torch and aimed the beam to get a better view. It took all his powers not to let the woman’s head fall back to the floor. Freyr could have sworn that he heard low, nasty, childish laughter coming from the hole in the floor behind him, but he was too flabbergasted even to be frightened.

It was Líf. Or what was left of her.

Either the stench inside had gone or they’d become so impervious to it that they no longer smelled it; at least, none of them pinched their nostrils or wrinkled their noses any more. They’d been too busy searching for the other two people who were supposed to be in the house and looking after Líf to let the disgusting smell bother them; the group grew increasingly dismayed at each empty room they checked. The couple seemed to have vanished, and Veigar and Dagný’s trip to the doctor’s house in search of them had revealed nothing.

The old sea dog, now installed on a kitchen stool, let out frequent gusty sighs, shaking his head and muttering that he tried to warn people but no one ever listened, not even now. Freyr wasn’t certain how well Dagný and Veigar could hear him, since they’d gone into the crawl space through the hole in the floor. Veigar had taken a look in there first, stuck his head down to follow his torch beam but raised it again immediately, his face pale, delivering the news that down in the crawl space was a skeleton. Probably a child’s. Freyr had stood up from attending to Líf, whose condition was worsening slowly but steadily, and said that he was going down there, but Dagný had grabbed his arm and stopped him. She’d then followed Veigar down herself and soon afterwards stuck her head out to tell Freyr that it wasn’t his son. Then they’d both come up and gone to the kitchen to have a word in private. As they moved out of sight, Freyr had positioned Líf’s head carefully on his rolled-up jacket and gone over to the hole to see with his own eyes whether it was Benni. The barbed wire surrounding his heart tightened, and until he looked down into the dark, low space he felt as if he couldn’t breathe for grief. But Dagný hadn’t been lying – this couldn’t be Benni; the body had clearly been lying there for too long.

When Dagný and Veigar returned, he was still lying on the floor with his head in the hole, transfixed by this sad sight. There was a tired-looking, dusty schoolbag next to the pile of bones that had once breathed, laughed and played without the slightest suspicion of where he or she would later die. Only the skull and delicate bones of parts of the fingers of one hand were visible, the remainder of the skeleton hidden beneath the clothing that the child had been wearing the day it had died. Shells were scattered over the earthen floor, covered with fine dust like everything else down there. Freyr had the sudden feeling that this must be Bernódus, who had vanished all those years ago. The boy to whom life had shown little mercy, and death even less. But this would no doubt be confirmed later. Freyr decided not to voice his thoughts to Dagný when she got him up off the floor by saying he mustn’t disturb the area. She was most likely thinking the same as he was.

‘Do you have much left to do?’ Freyr turned his head and shouted the question at the hole, to which Dagný and Veigar had returned, and which looked very much like an entrance to hell. Yellow light from their torches illuminated the stream of dust that was rising from the hole, as if a fire was burning beneath their feet. Now and then there were powerful flashes as they photographed the scene. ‘She’s got to get to the hospital as quickly as possible.’ It was hard to say what was afflicting Líf apart from the cuts on her face; those were hardly life-threatening, though they would change her life completely and permanently. As well as being boiling hot with a weak pulse, she was also coughing up blood regularly but weakly. She was probably suffering internal injuries and if nothing were done about it they could gradually lead to her death. And that wasn’t out of the question even if they did get her to a hospital immediately.

Dagný and Veigar wriggled dustily up through the hole, looking tired and not dissimilar to the little dog that was still curled up in the skipper’s arms. Dagný was holding the schoolbag and laid it gently on the kitchen table as if she were worried the leather might fall apart. ‘We’re ready. What’s the best way to take her to the boat?’

Freyr looked from the bag into Dagný’s eyes. ‘We’ve got to make some sort of stretcher. The best thing would be to call a helicopter, but I think we’ll be quicker going by boat; her condition is critical.’ He cleared his throat. ‘If you could take care of that I’d like to walk around the house and look for the septic tank. I can’t leave here without knowing whether I’m right or not.’

Dagný stared at him but then made her decision. ‘Come on then. No one’s going out alone here.’ Then she turned to Veigar and the skipper. ‘Can you two handle the stretcher?’ They nodded and Dagný and Freyr went out into the night, each armed with a torch. The feeling that Freyr had had before of someone following them returned as soon as he stepped out of the door, but then faded as they set off. Perhaps it was because he was focused on the surroundings and gave no thought to anything else; he found he actually didn’t remotely care what or whether anything was sharing the night with them. He had other things on his mind. Dagný, on the other hand, seemed tense, as if they’d changed roles from when they arrived at the house. She constantly jerked her torch to and fro as if searching for a lost cat. ‘Do you think we’ll find the other two?’ Freyr wanted to say something, had to say something to calm her nerves. He felt as if he were riding a giant rollercoaster that climbed steadily higher and higher until it reached its peak, then plunged down from there. ‘I was able to get Líf to tell me that the man, Garðar, went missing yesterday or the day before. She didn’t know what day it was or how long she’d been lying in the kitchen. I actually think it hasn’t been that long since she was injured. A few hours at most.’

Dagný seemed relieved by his chatter; the jerky movements of the beam from her torch slowed a little. ‘Did you ask her what happened, who attacked her?’

‘I’m not certain she knew what she was saying but she mentioned a boy. I couldn’t get a name from her or any more details. She said that he took Katrín; killed her and dragged her out. The cuts have severed the nerves that control facial movement, on both sides. Her face is paralysed so it’s difficult for her to speak.’ He decided not to mention the questions he’d asked Líf about the insulin when she came round. Because of the uncertainty of her condition this was his only chance to clear this up, and although it actually didn’t matter, it was still churning up his insides. Otherwise, if the worst were to happen, she would take the answer with her to the grave. When Freyr witnessed her like this, deprived of her beauty, he finally saw through her. Of course he also bore the blame for their having been together, but he still felt hatred fasten its claws into him. If he hadn’t met up with her after fetching the drug, Benni wouldn’t have died. Not in that way. His hatred was primitive, like that which Adam and Eve must have felt for the serpent after they’d been driven from paradise. For this reason Freyr didn’t feel sorry for Líf, however unfair that sounded. His heart and soul had hardened against her. So he didn’t shield her from difficult questions, as he should have, but instead pressured her until she tried to answer weakly. The answers had been vague, yet she said that Einar, which he recalled was the name of her husband, had deserved it. Freyr had then stopped his questioning immediately; he suddenly didn’t want to have his suspicions confirmed. Her questions about insulin, after finding out that it didn’t cause intoxication, had been far too specific, and probably hadn’t been asked just to fill the silence as he’d thought at the time.