2012
Helgi
The despairing silence was broken.
There was someone at the front door, knocking loudly.
Helgi got to his feet.
He had been sitting on the sofa with a detective novel, trying to calm himself down before bed by losing himself in a fictional world, but now the peace was over.
He and Bergthóra rented a basement flat in an old house not far from Reykjavík’s Laugardalur area. The whole house was rented out, the flat upstairs occupied by a couple with two children. Apparently the landlord lived overseas.
Helgi didn’t get on particularly well with the other tenants, who had a tendency to be rude and interfering, as if their rights took precedence just because they lived in the larger half of the house. As a result, relations between the basement and upstairs were strictly limited and frosty at best.
Helgi was afraid it was the neighbour at the door now, sticking his nose in yet again. But there was another, worse possibility.
He moved reluctantly towards the hall. The sitting room was cosy, the walls lined from floor to ceiling with books – his books; a comfy armchair by the shelves and a decent-sized sofa in front of the television. There were scented candles on the coffee table, but Helgi hadn’t lit them. Not this time. He’d put a record on the stereo, though; a real vinyl one. The stereo was new and connected up to the home cinema, but the records he played were old jazz LPs that had belonged to his father. The heavy banging on the front door broke through the soothing music, wrecking the tranquil atmosphere that had settled over the flat.
Hell, Helgi thought.
He had reached the hall when there was another round of hammering, even louder this time. He drew a sharp breath, then took hold of the handle, pausing briefly to collect himself before he turned the latch and opened the door.
Outside stood a uniformed police officer, a broad-shouldered young man in his mid-twenties, with strong features. He was standing in the glow of the outside light, brightly illuminated in the evening darkness, wearing a look of grim determination, as if he were anticipating a fight. Helgi didn’t recognize him. In the shadows, a little behind him, stood another officer. He seemed more at his ease, judging by his stance, though Helgi couldn’t make out his face.
‘Good evening,’ said the illuminated officer. His voice wasn’t as authoritative as Helgi had been expecting; in fact he thought he detected a faint tremor. Perhaps the determined set of the man’s features was just a ploy to disguise his nerves. Perhaps it was his first shift. ‘Helgi? Helgi Reykdal?’
Although Helgi, now in his early thirties, wasn’t that much older than the man asking his name, he sensed he had the advantage over this young officer.
‘Helgi Reykdal, yes, that’s right. Why, what’s up?’ he asked smoothly, shifting the balance of power slightly.
‘We’ve received – that’s to say…’ The young policeman hesitated, as Helgi had guessed he might. ‘A complaint has been received…’
Helgi interrupted. ‘A complaint? Who from?’ He wasn’t going to let himself appear flustered.
‘Well, we … er, we can’t reveal that.’
‘There’s a bloke upstairs,’ Helgi said, smiling. ‘He’s a bloody nuisance, always complaining. I reckon he must be unhappily married or something. You can’t so much as raise your voice, or, I don’t know, you can’t even turn up the TV, without him banging on the floor with a broom handle. And now I see he’s called the police.’
‘He heard a loud altercation…’ The young officer broke off mid-sentence, clearly realizing that he had said too much. ‘That’s to say, we received a complaint…’
‘You already mentioned that,’ Helgi said, unfazed.
‘A complaint about a loud disturbance at this address – a quarrel and screaming. More serious than your average row.’
At that moment the other police officer emerged from the shadows, looked Helgi straight in the eye, then took a step closer. ‘You know, I thought the name sounded familiar,’ he said to Helgi.
The moment he got a good look at the man, Helgi recognized him. They had sometimes worked the same shifts in the Reykjavík police last year, though they didn’t actually know each other that well.
‘The name’s Reimar,’ the officer said. ‘Were you just temping with us over the summer or were you with us for longer?’
‘That’s right, I temped for a bit after finishing my police training,’ Helgi replied. ‘Then I went on to do a post-grad degree in criminology.’
‘Oh, yes, that was it,’ Reimar said. ‘I seem to remember someone telling me. In the UK, wasn’t it? I’ve often thought about it myself, you know – continuing my education.’
Helgi nodded. He was still standing at his ease in the doorway, as if he were the one in charge. ‘Strictly speaking, I’m still a student. I just need to finish my dissertation, but it made more sense for us to move back to Iceland. My partner got offered a good job, you see.’ Helgi smiled.
‘Nice to run into you again,’ Reimar said. ‘Well, not in the most desirable circumstances, obviously. So you’re having problems with your neighbour, are you?’
‘Yes, you can say that again. The man’s a bloody idiot. It’s only a rented flat, though, so we’ll be moving sooner or later.’
‘He heard a disturbance,’ the younger officer said slowly.
‘That’s right, my partner and I had a bit of a disagreement, but nothing to call the police about. Like I said, you can hardly turn up the TV without the neighbour appearing on our doorstep. Sound carries terribly easily in these old houses.’
‘Tell me about it,’ Reimar said. ‘I live in a place like that in the west end.’
‘I’m sorry you were put to the trouble of coming out here,’ Helgi went on, adding, after a short pause: ‘Would you like to speak to my partner? To check that everything’s OK? She’s asleep, as a matter of fact, but I can always wake her.’
Reimar smiled. ‘That won’t be necessary.’
His colleague seemed on the point of saying something. Helgi looked at him, and it was as if his silence stifled the young man’s words.
After a moment, Reimar spoke up again. ‘Well, sorry to disturb you, Helgi. I hope we didn’t wake you.’
‘That’s absolutely fine. I was just reading.’
‘Will you be joining us in the police again after you finish your studies?’
‘That’s currently being worked out. I’m in talks with Reykjavík CID about maybe joining them later this year. It would be my dream job, actually.’
‘Great, then hopefully we’ll see you again soon.’ Reimar held out his hand and Helgi shook it before closing the door.
He drew a deep breath. That had gone as well as he could have hoped. He hadn’t expected the prick upstairs to call the police, but he supposed it was understandable, given the amount of noise they’d been making.
He could feel his heart thudding uncomfortably fast but was pleased at how unruffled he had managed to appear in his conversation with the two officers. His police training had come in useful, ironically enough.
It was probably pointless having another go at getting into the detective story he had been reading, but he decided to try. He didn’t want the bloody neighbour to ruin the rest of his evening. Although he was working flat out on his dissertation, he had to take time off sometimes, and there was nowhere he relaxed better than on the sofa with a good whodunnit.
His late father, who had run an antiquarian bookshop up north, had been a keen collector of translated detective novels and had encouraged his son to read them from an early age. After he died, Helgi had inherited his fine old library, and it meant a lot to him. He had read many though not all of the books before and was now working his way through the lot, bit by bit, enjoying the chance to reacquaint himself with stories he had first read in his teens.
Resuming his seat on the sofa, he opened the book, a worn copy of A Puzzle for Fools by Patrick Quentin. He could remember listening to a play based on the novel, broadcast on Icelandic National Radio when he was a teenager. It had been quite well done, as far as he could recall. The book centred on a series of murders at a hospital – or sanatorium – where the protagonist, Peter Duluth, had been admitted for alcoholism. Quite an unusual topic for a book that had been published in the golden age of the detective novel, on the eve of the Second World War. The story had been on Helgi’s mind recently in connection with his dissertation. Deaths at a sanatorium …
He read a few more pages but couldn’t focus. Perhaps the book just wasn’t very good, but he thought it more likely that the police, or rather his upstairs neighbour, had unsettled him. Maybe it would be better to put the book aside for now, to finish at the weekend, and try to get some sleep instead. He would bed down on the sofa, as usual after one of their rows. It was always him who had to make the sacrifice.
He laid the book gently on the coffee table; he always took great care of the collection. They were his treasures, these old detective novels, even though they might not fetch much of a price if sold.
Helgi was eager to get to sleep; as a rule, he had no problems dropping off and he really needed to gather his strength for the job of finishing his dissertation. The subject was so unusual that he had been rather surprised when his tutor in the UK had agreed to it.
A blanket and a cushion would have to take the place of a pillow and duvet tonight, but that didn’t matter; he was used to it and the flat was perfectly warm.
Helgi took off his white shirt and hung it over the back of a chair.
His heart missed a beat.
Just as well his colleagues in the police hadn’t noticed the small red bloodstain on the sleeve.
1983Tinna
Tinna ploughed through the rain, head down, clutching her coat tightly around herself. The sky was unusually grey and in the downpour everything seemed to merge into one: clouds, pavement; even the houses appeared drab and colourless. All other sounds had faded into the background and the only thing she could hear was the drumming of the rain, but then there was hardly another soul about in the streets of Akureyri at a quarter to seven on a Saturday morning. It was a relief to reach the car and get inside out of the wet.
Tinna was young; it wasn’t that long since she had graduated from her nursing degree. As a native of the north Icelandic town of Akureyri, she had initially been over the moon to get a job there after finishing her studies in Reykjavík, since it meant she could be close to her parents and extended family. In practice, though, it had been a bit of a comedown to return to the quiet little town on the fjord after a taste of life in the big city. Although it was known as the capital of the north, Akureyri had a population of only thirteen thousand people, and Tinna was already finding it claustrophobic to be surrounded again by the faces she had grown up with. If she wanted to expand her social circle, she was beginning to realize that she would have to head back south at some point.
But, for now, the job at the old sanatorium wasn’t bad, though the place was eight kilometres out of town, so not exactly within walking distance of her flat. Her work wasn’t quite as demanding as she could have wished either, but she supposed it represented a decent enough start to her career. Although the tuberculosis patients were long gone – the last one had departed before Tinna was born – the hospital was still overshadowed by its association with the disease they used to call the ‘white death’. And the locals still spoke of the place with an awed dread, despite the hospital standing empty, with the sole exception of the wing where Tinna worked. The department had no patients but was concerned with diagnostics, research and the development of workflow processes in health care. Meanwhile, a bunch of people down south in Reykjavík were busy debating the best possible use the old sanatorium buildings could be put to in the future.
Tinna had gone to bed late, having sat up half the night with her old friend Bigga, and now she was fighting off tiredness. The weather didn’t help. How she would have loved to turn round and go home, crawl under her duvet and fall asleep again with the ticking of the rain in her ears. Perhaps she should have called in sick, but that wouldn’t have created a very good impression. She would just have to grit her teeth and slog through this morning’s shift, then have a coffee and hope the day would gradually pick up after that.
It was her job to arrive first, switch on the lights, make the coffee, and get everything up and running for the day. She was supposed to be there on the dot of seven, an hour before the other two nurses, Yrsa and Elísabet, came in. They were both more experienced than her, in fact the older woman, Yrsa, had several decades of experience under her belt and couldn’t have much time left before she retired. Like Tinna, she had begun her career at the sanatorium, but, unlike Tinna, she was clearly intending to finish it there too. Of course, Yrsa would have had to deal with far more challenging duties when she was young, as the hospital had still been full of TB patients back then. Tinna liked to think of herself as a level-headed person, but even she sometimes had the fancy that the ghosts of the departed still roamed the empty corridors. She had never actually been aware of anything herself, but, all the same, she often felt uneasy in the building, especially when she was alone.
The surrounding mountains were shrouded in cloud today, the waters of Eyjafjördur grey, as she drove out of town through the teeming rain, her wipers swishing, past the little airport and on up the valley until eventually she reached the hospital turn-off. The white buildings loomed up, standing in splendid isolation on their hillside above the river, overshadowed by a garden of mature pines in this otherwise bare landscape. The main block was an austere, three-storey edifice, its long rows of windows dark and empty these days. More than ever, it reminded Tinna of an old sanatorium in a horror movie.
She dashed through the rain from the car to the entrance, eager to get under cover. In her relief at being inside, it took her a moment or two to realize that the door hadn’t been locked, as it usually was. Had someone forgotten to close up yesterday evening? The lights in the hall were on too. That was strange.
It was probably Yrsa’s fault. Just as well, since that meant she wouldn’t be able to take it out on anyone else. In spite of her quiet, unassuming demeanour, Yrsa could be surprisingly quick to fly off the handle when something happened to displease her. Tinna had recently seen her give Elísabet a vicious tongue-lashing for a minor mistake, though Elísabet had been working there far longer than Tinna. It seemed that Tinna was still in Yrsa’s good books, for what it was worth, though they were very far from what you might call friends. In fact, Tinna knew next to nothing about Yrsa beyond the fact that she had worked as a nurse for many years. They never discussed anything that you might call personal. Yrsa had never asked Tinna about her family or her interests, and certainly hadn’t revealed anything about her own. The older woman tended to be taciturn and unforthcoming. She went around with a dour face, as though she’d been forced to watch too much suffering over the years, which was no doubt true. Tinna pictured her: small, always dressed in a starched white uniform, her short, silver-grey hair framing a square face, her eyes distant, as though her thoughts were wandering among old memories, dwelling on all the patients who had lost the battle with the merciless disease. If there was one thing Tinna was determined to avoid, it was being stuck here for her entire working life like Yrsa. As far as she was concerned, this job was no more than a springboard; in future she wanted to specialize in more demanding work at a larger hospital.
Tinna headed up the staircase, walking slowly to begin with, conscious of every echoing footstep, uncomfortably aware that she was totally alone in this wing of the building. She was always a little spooked in the morning. She quickened her pace slightly, as she normally did when approaching the upper landing, and the echoes grew louder, more overwhelming, seeming to reverberate all around her. Tinna breathed easier once she was upstairs. Her new yellow coat was soaking wet, and she took it off carefully, anxious to avoid getting rainwater all over the floor, but a small puddle formed under the pegs anyway. Still, what did it matter when you could bet that it would be her job to wipe it up?
The door to Yrsa’s office was standing ajar. That too was unusual, and again Tinna felt a prickle of discomfort. It occurred to her with a jolt that she might not be alone after all. Perhaps Yrsa had come in at the crack of dawn and that’s why the front door had been unlocked and the door to her office was open.
Tinna called out, though not very loudly: ‘Yrsa, are you in already?’
She didn’t move but stood quite still by the row of pegs, watching the water dripping from her yellow coat on to the tiles. She expected Yrsa to answer with her usual brusqueness, then order her to bring a coffee, adding, ‘And don’t hang about.’ But the only sound she could hear was the quiet, muffled plinking of the drops as they landed on the tiles, a sure sign that Yrsa was not on the premises.
Tinna decided to double-check anyway. She was still feeling unsettled, some primitive instinct warning her that something was wrong. She walked over to Yrsa’s office and hovered for a moment or two outside her door before pushing it fully open.
Copyright © 2019 by Ragnar Jónasson. Copyright © 2024 by Victoria Cribb
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