Outrage (5 page)

‘Over a year?’ Elinborg repeated.

‘He didn’t have much contact with me,’ Kristjana said.

‘Yes, but hadn’t you heard from him for over a year?’

‘No.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘He last came here three years ago. Didn’t stay long, probably about an hour. He didn’t speak to anyone but me. He said he was passing through, in a hurry. I don’t know where he was going. I didn’t ask.’

‘Were you estranged?’

‘No, not as such, but he didn’t feel any need to be in touch,’ said Kristjana.

‘But what about you? Didn’t you ring him?’

‘He was always changing his phone number, so eventually I gave up trying. And, since he wasn’t interested, I didn’t want to impose. I left him alone.’

Neither woman spoke for a while.

‘Do you know who did it?’ Kristjana finally asked.

‘We have no idea,’ Elinborg replied. ‘The investigation’s in its early stages, so …’

‘It could take a long time?’

‘Possibly. So you didn’t know much about his private life - friends, women in his life, or …’

‘No, I didn’t know anything about that. Did he live with a woman? The last I knew, he didn’t. That was one of the things I talked to him about, whether he was going to settle down, start a family and that. He didn’t give me much of an answer. He probably thought I was nagging.’

‘We believe he lived alone,’ said Elinborg. ‘His landlord had that impression. Did he have any friends here in the village?’

‘They’ve all moved away. The young people all leave, that’s nothing new. They’re talking about closing down the school, bussing the children over to the next fjord every day. This place has had the kiss of death. Maybe I should have left, too, gone to your wonderful Reykjavik. I’ve never been, and I never shall. People didn’t travel much in the old days, and somehow I never had reason to go to the capital. I don’t care, though. There’s never been anything for me there. Nothing. Did you grow up there?’

‘Yes,’ said Elinborg. ‘I like the city, and I quite understand those who want to move and settle there. So, your son: was he not in contact with anyone here in the village?’

‘No,’ answered Kristjana firmly. ‘Not so far as I know.’

‘Did he ever get into trouble here? Anything illegal? Did he make any enemies?’

‘Here? No. Absolutely not. I don’t know much about him after he left here. As I said, I wasn’t aware of his circumstances, so I can’t answer questions like that. I’m sorry I can’t help. It’s just the way he was.’ She gazed at Elinborg. ‘You can’t tell what will become of your children. Do you have kids of your own?’

Elinborg nodded.

‘What do you know about what they’re up to?’ said Kristjana. Elinborg thought of Valthor. ‘How do you know what they may do?’ Kristjana asked. ‘I realise it’s not an acceptable thing to say, but I didn’t know my son well: I didn’t know what he did from day to day, or what he was thinking. In many ways he was a stranger to me, and a mystery. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Your children go away, and they gradually become strangers to you, except …’ Kristjana had shredded her tissue into tiny pieces. ‘You just have to grit your teeth,’ she said. ‘I soon learned that when I was young. Not to be sorry for myself. So now I’ll just grit my teeth, as usual.’

Elinborg’s mind went to the Rohypnol. If it was found in the pocket of a young man who had gone out for the evening and brought a woman home, the inference was fairly obvious.

‘When Runolfur lived here,’ Elinborg asked cautiously, ‘was he involved with any women?’

‘I’ve no idea,’ Kristjana answered. ‘Why are you asking about that? Women? I don’t know about any women!’

‘Well, could you tell me if there’s anyone in the village who knew him, who I could speak to?’ Elinborg asked calmly.

‘Answer me! Why are you asking about women?’

‘We know nothing about him. But …’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s possible that his conduct was unusual,’ said Elinborg. ‘With women.’

‘His conduct? Unusual?’

‘Maybe even involving drugs.’

‘What do you mean? What drugs?’

‘They’re sometimes called date-rape drugs,’ Elinborg replied.

Kristjana was staring at her.

‘It’s also possible that he was only selling the drugs, but we aren’t excluding the other possibility. We could be wrong. At this point we haven’t got much to go on. We don’t know why he had the drugs in his pocket when he was found dead.’

‘A date-rape drug?’

‘It’s called Rohypnol. It’s a sedative, which puts you to sleep and causes memory loss. We felt you should know. It’s the kind of detail that the media may get hold of.’

Suddenly the storm battered against the wall of the house. A blizzard masked the view from the windows, and the room grew darker still.

For a long time Kristjana sat without uttering a word. ‘I can’t imagine why he would carry such a thing,’ she said at last.

‘No, of course not.’

‘As if I hadn’t heard enough.’

‘I understand that this must be hard for you.’

‘Now I hardly know which is worse.’

‘I’m sorry?’

Kristjana gazed out of the window into the snowstorm. ‘That he was murdered, or that he was a rapist.’

‘We don’t know that for sure,’ said Elinborg.

Kristjana met her gaze. ‘No, you lot never know anything.’

6

Elinborg had to stay the night. She settled into her spacious room in a small guest house on a hill just outside the village, and rang Sigurdur Oli to tell him about her interview with Kristjana - not that it had yielded much. She rang home and spoke to Teddi, who had picked up a takeaway, and to Theodora who was eager to tell her mother about a planned trip with the Girl Guides to Ulfljotsvatn lake in a fortnight’s time. They had a long talk. The boys were out at the cinema. Elinborg reflected that she would probably be able to read all about it on the Internet before long.

Not far from the guest house was a restaurant that also served as a pub, sports bar, video-rental shop and, apparently, a laundrette. As she entered, she saw a man handing his dirty washing over the bar, commenting that it would be good to have it back on Thursday. The menu included the usuals: sandwiches, burger and chips with pink cocktail-sauce, roast lamb, deep-fried fish. Elinborg opted for the fish. Two of the tables were occupied. At one of them three men were drinking beer and watching football on a flatscreen TV; at the other an elderly couple, outsiders like her, were eating the fried fish.

She was missing Theodora, not having seen her for two days. Elinborg smiled to herself as she thought of her daughter. She would sometimes make surprising pronouncements about life. Her speech was rather formal and a little bit old-fashioned, and Elinborg worried that Theodora might be teased at school. But apparently there was no cause for concern. ‘Why’s he so lugubrious?’ she had asked about a miserable newsreader on TV. ‘That’s rather droll,’ she would say when she read something funny in the paper. Elinborg assumed that she must have picked up such words from her extensive reading.

The fish was not bad, and the freshly baked bread served with it was delicious. Elinborg left the chips, which she had never particularly liked. When she had finished her fish she asked if the restaurant served espresso. The bartender, a woman of uncertain age who also cooked, baked, rented out videos and took in washing, conjured up a cup of good espresso in no time. The door opened, and someone came in to look at the videos.

The shawl that had been found in Runolfur’s flat was a puzzle. It did not necessarily mean that a woman had been there at the time of the killing - or that his assailant had been a woman. The shawl could have been lying on the floor where it was found, under the bed, for several days. Yet the inescapable conclusion was that Runolfur might have used the date-rape drug that evening, that he could have brought a woman home with him - a woman who’d accompanied him willingly or otherwise - and that something had happened which had prompted the violent attack. Perhaps the effects of the drug had worn off and when the woman had regained consciousness she had seized the nearest weapon, whether for self-defence or revenge.

The murder weapon, a knife, had not been found in the flat and the murderer had left no trace, except for his or her evident hatred and rage against the dead man. If Runolfur had raped the woman who owned the shawl, and had then been attacked and killed by her, how did that help the police? Where had the shawl been bought? Officers would try to identify the shop that had sold it, but it did not look new and that line of enquiry might yield no result. The woman had worn perfume that lingered in the shawl. The fragrance had not yet been identified but it was only a matter of time before it was, and enquiries would then be made at stores where it was sold. The shawl also smelt of smoke, which might only indicate that the owner had worn it in bars where people were smoking, or alternatively that she was a smoker herself. Runolfur was in his early thirties, and it was possible that he had met a woman of similar age. Dark hairs had been found on the shawl and in Runolfur’s flat. They were not dyed. So the woman was a brunette. She must wear her hair short, as the hairs found were not long.

Perhaps she worked at a restaurant that served tandoori dishes. Elinborg knew something about tandoori cookery, and had even included some tandoori dishes in the cookery book that she had published. She had read up on tandoori cuisine and felt pretty well-informed about it. She owned two different clay tandoori pots. In India they would traditionally be heated in a pit filled with burning charcoal so that the meat was cooked evenly from all sides at a high temperature. Elinborg had occasionally buried a tandoori pot in her back garden in the authentic manner, but usually she put it in the oven or heated it over charcoal on an old barbecue. The crucial factor was the marinade, for which Elinborg used a combination of spices, blending them to taste with plain yoghurt. For a red colour she added ground annatto seed; for yellow, saffron. She generally experimented with a mixture of cayenne pepper, coriander, ginger and garlic, or with a garam masala that she made herself by using roasted or ground cardamom, cumin, cinnamon, garlic and black pepper, with a little nutmeg. She had also been trying out variations using Icelandic herbs such as wild thyme, angelica root, dandelion leaves and lovage. She would rub the marinade into the meat - chicken or pork - and leave it for several hours before it went into the tandoori pot. Sometimes a little of the marinade would splash on to the hot coals, bringing out more strongly the tangy tandoori fragrance that Elinborg had smelt on the shawl. She wondered if the woman they were looking for might have a job in Indian cookery. Or perhaps, like Elinborg, she was simply interested in Indian food, or even specifically in tandoori dishes. She too might have a tandoori pot in her kitchen, along with all the spices that made the dish so mouth-watering.

The elderly couple had finished their meal and gone, and the three football fans left as soon as the match ended. Elinborg sat for some time on her own, then went to the bar to pay. She thanked the bartender for a good meal. They spoke briefly about the bread, which Elinborg had enjoyed. The woman asked what brought her to the village and Elinborg told her.

‘He was at primary school here with my son,’ said the bartender. She was plump and dressed in a sleeveless black top, with sturdy upper arms and a heavy bosom under a voluminous apron. She said she had seen the news on TV. Runolfur was the talk of the village.

‘Did you know him at all?’ Elinborg enquired, looking out the window. It had started to snow again.

‘Everyone knows everyone around here. Runolfur was quite an ordinary lad. A bit rebellious, perhaps. He left as soon as he could - like most of the youngsters. I never had much to do with him. I know Kristjana was rather rough on him - she could lash out if he misbehaved. She’s hard as nails. She used to work in the local fish factory until it closed down.’

‘Are any of his friends still living here?’

The woman folded her hefty arms and thought. ‘They’ve all moved away, so far as I know,’ she said. ‘The population’s half what it was ten years ago.’

‘I see,’ said Elinborg. ‘Well, thank you.’

She was on her way out when she saw a shelf of videotapes and DVDs in a niche by the door. Elinborg did not go in for films much, but she watched sometimes if the males of the family rented something interesting. But crime films had no appeal, and romances left her cold. She preferred comedy. Theodora had similar tastes, and occasionally the two of them would rent a comedy while Teddi and the boys were glued to some thriller.

Elinborg glanced over the shelf, and recognised one or two films she had already seen. A girl of about twenty was making her choice. She looked over at Elinborg and said hello. ‘Are you the policewoman from Reykjavik?’ she asked.

Elinborg realised that news of her presence had spread through the whole village.

‘Yes,’ she replied.

‘There’s one person here in the village who knew him,’ the girl said.

’
Him
? You mean …?’

‘Runolfur. His name’s Valdimar. He runs the garage.’

‘And who are you?’

‘I was just taking a look at the films,’ replied the girl. Then she slipped past Elinborg and out the door.

Elinborg walked the streets in the heavy snow until she found a small motor workshop at the northern end of the village. Above the half-open sliding door of an old garage building a weak light shone on a weather-beaten sign on which the name of the business was illegible. It looked to Elinborg as if it had been peppered with shotgun pellets. She went through the reception area and into the workshop, where a man of about thirty was working behind a large tractor. He was wearing a tatty baseball cap and overalls that had once been dark blue but were now blackened with dirt. Elinborg introduced herself, and explained that she was from the police. The man twisted an oily rag in his hands as he returned Elinborg’s greeting, uncertain whether he should offer her his greasy hand. He was tall and lanky, awkward-looking. He said his name was Valdimar.

‘I heard you were here,’ he said. ‘Because of Runolfur.’