Black Skies (13 page)

‘No.’

‘Did he go to see her for reasons of his own or was he acting for someone else?’

Kristján stared at him, and Sigurdur Óli realised that he had lost concentration. This had happened several times during their conversation, especially when Sigurdur Óli’s questions were too convoluted. Kristján would gawp at him with incomprehension and Sigurdur Óli would have to rephrase his question more concisely. He did so again, trying not to speak too quickly.

‘Did Thórarinn know the woman?’

‘The one he attacked?’ Kristján asked knowledgeably. ‘No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. He didn’t mention it.’

‘Was he calling in a drugs debt?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Have you any idea what he wanted with her?’

‘No.’

‘Does Thórarinn know the woman’s partner? His name’s Ebeneser.’

‘I’ve never heard him mention anyone called Ebeneser. Is he a foreigner?’

‘Would you say that Thórarinn was a violent man?’

Kristján thought. He wondered if he should tell them about the time Thórarinn had battered him for being behind on his debts, or the time he had broken his middle finger. He had held his finger and bent it slowly but inexorably backwards until something inside it snapped. The pain had been unbearable. But Thórarinn could be OK; that is, once he had come to terms with the fact that he would never get any money out of Kristján except by making him work.
After
that they had become mates of sorts, though he did not think that Thórarinn could have many friends, at least not that he knew of. He had heard how he spoke to his wife as well and it was not pretty; he had once seen her with a bump on her forehead and a split lip. The way Thórarinn talked about her was not pretty either, though he was good to his kids. But he was no barrel of laughs; indeed he had never really seen Thórarinn in a good mood, and he had warned Kristján on numerous occasions that if he squealed to the police he would kill him. Without hesitation. Just take him out.

‘What did you say?’ asked Kristján, having forgotten the question.

Sigurdur Óli sighed in exasperation and repeated himself.

‘He certainly can be,’ Kristján replied. ‘I don’t think his wife has a very good time.’

‘And you claim that Thórarinn is a debt collector?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you know that for sure? Have you witnessed it?’

‘He came after me for money,’ Kristján said. ‘And there are others I know about. He’s not a guy to mess with when he’s calling in his own debts. And he works for other people too.’

‘What people?’

‘Other dealers. Anyone, really.’

‘Does he use a baseball bat?’

‘No question,’ said Kristján without hesitation. But then he had never heard of a debt collector who did not use a baseball bat.

‘When were you last in contact with him?’

‘When he came to see me, the day after it happened.’

‘Do you know where he is now?’

‘I expect he’s at home. Or at work.’

‘You don’t think he’s gone into hiding?’

Kristján shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

‘Where would he go in that case?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes.’

Sigurdur Óli continued to grill Kristján with some success. In spite of the countless death threats he had received, the boy held nothing back. It turned out that like so many other members of Reykjavík’s benighted underworld, Thórarinn had a nickname that explained a lot to Sigurdur Óli. Toggi ‘Sprint’.

20

TO BEGIN WITH
, he hardly got to know his mother’s new boyfriend, as the man, who she never called anything but Röggi, was rarely home. Röggi was either at sea or working out of town and had little contact with mother and son.

After moving home from the farm he mostly looked after himself. He met other kids in the neighbourhood and would go to the three o’clock cinema showings with them. When school began in the autumn he ended up in the same class as some of these new friends. He was entirely responsible for getting himself to school; waking himself up in the morning, finding his clothes and, if there was any food to be had in the kitchen, making a packed lunch. His mother never surfaced that early, since she would invariably stay up late at night, sometimes receiving visitors that he did not know and tried to avoid meeting. Unable to sleep in the living room, he would flee into his mother’s room. Sometimes he heard the sounds of drinking and once a fight broke out and someone called the police. He watched from the bedroom window as a staggering drunk was hustled into a police car, hurling abuse at the officers. They were
not
gentle with him either, ramming him into the car door and knocking his feet from under him. He saw his mother standing in the doorway, yelling obscenities. Then she slammed the door and the noise of partying continued unabated till morning.

He was ashamed of himself for losing the thousand-krona note that the farmer had given him in parting. He had had it in the bus on the way to town, stuffed for safe keeping into his trouser pocket which he patted from time to time. But he had forgotten all about the money during the long wait at the bus station, such was his fear that no one would come to fetch him. When he got home he had fallen asleep at the kitchen table and by the time he woke up on the sofa the next day he had forgotten all about the money, unused as he was to owning anything, least of all a treasure like that. It was not until late in the evening that he remembered the gift. As he was still wearing the same trousers, he shoved his hand in his pocket, then in the other, then in the back pockets, then in increasing desperation he found the jacket he had been wearing and searched all its pockets, followed by his suitcase, the kitchen, the sofa, the living room, even behind the television. He told his mother that he had lost the money and asked if they could go down to the bus station to see if anyone had returned it.

‘A thousand kronur!’ his mother exclaimed. ‘Who do you think would give you a thousand kronur?’

It took him a while to convince her that he was telling the truth.

‘It must have fallen out of your pocket,’ said Sigurveig. ‘You can forget it. Nobody will hand in a thousand kronur. Nobody. You’re such an idiot – it’s a lot of money. Are you sure you weren’t just dreaming?’ She lit a cigarette.

Eventually, after persistent pleading on his part, she agreed to ring the bus station. He listened to the extremely brief conversation.

‘No, of course not, I didn’t think so,’ she said when she was satisfied that no thousand-krona note had been handed in.

And that was that. His mother cut short any further mention of the money and the next time the subject came up when Röggi was at home, he claimed he had no idea what the boy was on about: he had never seen any thousand-krona note.

He felt unable to establish any real connection with his mother, and was at a loss to understand why she had insisted on summoning him home from the countryside. He knew precious little about her; she behaved like a stranger and showed virtually no interest in him. She seemed to live in a world of her own in which there was no place for him, nor did she have any contact with her other children or relatives. Since she was unemployed, the only people she mixed with seemed to be night owls like herself. She rarely asked how he was, if he had made any friends, if he liked school, if he was bullied.

If she had ever shown any curiosity he would have told her that he was happy at school and getting on fine with his lessons. He could have done with some help with arithmetic, but he did not know where to look for that. Spelling was difficult too; the rules were a mystery and he got poor marks in his tests, although his teacher was understanding and patient. He was also slow at writing, which did not help when they played the spelling test unnecessarily fast on the tape player, making it hard for him to get it all down. He could have told her too that he found it uncomfortable when people noticed that he had no packed lunch or that he had been wearing the same clothes for so long that they had begun to smell.

He did his homework conscientiously every day and spent the evenings glued to the television; it was like having a cinema in your living room. He watched the entire schedule with equal enthusiasm: news, chat shows, cop dramas and Icelandic light-entertainment programmes with musical interludes. At weekends they showed the
odd
film and he never missed any. Along with the cartoons, the films were probably his favourite.

Röggi was taciturn when he was at home and gave away little about what he did. He did not appear to have any friends or acquaintances. Nobody came round and no one ever rang for him. The man slept a lot on his days off and was up all night. Once he woke up in the middle of the night to see Röggi in the kitchen, smoking a cigarette with a bottle in front of him. Another time he woke up to find Röggi standing over him, watching him expressionlessly, before returning to the bedroom without saying a word. If anything, he felt that Röggi showed more interest in him than his mother did. He would ask him about school and about his teachers, and watch TV with him. He gave him little presents too: sweets, fizzy drinks, chewing gum.

Then, one autumn evening while his mother was out and Röggi was at home sitting in front of the TV with him, Röggi asked if he would like to see some proper films, cartoons. Yes, he said. Röggi went into the bedroom and came out carrying the strange box that he had noticed on the living-room table on his first evening home from the country. Röggi prised off the cover to reveal the projector, then went back into the bedroom to fetch a cardboard box full of films, and finally a small screen on a tripod that he pulled down out of a long cylinder.

‘I’m going to show you some cartoons I’ve got,’ Röggi said, taking some reels from the box and starting to thread one into the machine.

He flicked a switch and the machine started up. A white glare lit up the screen. The projector emitted a pleasant whirring sound as the film ran in front of the bulb and the glare developed lines, dots and numbers until finally images appeared.

They watched it through to the end. Then Röggi rewound the film, put it away and took out another, just as lively and entertaining as the first. Both were Donald Duck cartoons.

When it was over, Röggi threaded a third reel into the projector without saying a word. The film was in colour, foreign, and began with a grown-up man stroking the hair of a girl who could not have been more than seven years old. Then he started to undress her.

‘I never wanted it!’ he shouted, as he stood over the old man. He had toppled backwards on to the floor, still tied to the chair. ‘I never wanted to watch that filthy shit. You made me do it, you forced me and forced me … you forced me …’

He kicked the man, kicked him like a dog, kicked him and sobbed and yelled at him, kept on kicking and sobbing.

‘I never wanted it!’

21

THÓRARINN HAD GONE
into hiding.

Sigurdur Óli had headed over to the modest terraced house on Sogavegur where Thórarinn lived, taking a small team after deciding that there was no need to call in the special squad. As he knocked on the door it was getting on for evening and a cold pall of drizzle hung low over the city. The street lights had come on some time ago and cast a misty glow over the surroundings. Sigurdur Óli stood waiting for the door to open, Finnur at his side and a couple of policemen a little way behind them. Two officers had gone round behind the house in case Thórarinn made a break for it out of the back exit. Suddenly, the front door opened and a little girl of about six years old stood gazing up at them.

Sigurdur Óli bent down. ‘Is your daddy home?’ he asked, trying to smile.

‘No,’ said the little girl.

Another girl appeared behind her. She must have been around ten and gazed at Sigurdur Óli, Finnur and the other officers.

‘Is your mummy home?’ asked Sigurdur Óli, addressing his question to the elder girl this time.

‘She’s asleep,’ said the girl.

‘Could you wake her up for us, please?’ asked Sigurdur Óli, attempting to sound friendly. It did not seem to work.

‘We’re not to wake her,’ said the girl.

Sigurdur Óli glanced at Finnur.

‘You’ll need to wake her up for us, dear,’ said Finnur firmly. ‘We’re from the police and we need to talk to your father. Do you know where he is?’

‘He’s at work,’ answered the girl. ‘I’ll wake Mum,’ she added, vanishing into the house.

They waited on the steps for some time, the other officers shuffling their feet in the drizzle. The younger girl was still standing in the doorway, her eyes full of doubt. They had a warrant to enter and search the house but, ignoring Sigurdur Óli’s advice, Finnur had announced that he did not want to cause unnecessary alarm if there were children involved. They knew that there were three, the youngest of whom was only four years old. They also knew that Thórarinn was not at work. On enquiry they had discovered that he had not done any jobs since Monday. The police had already issued an alert for his van.

At last the elder girl returned to stare at them in silence from the doorway, and shortly afterwards their mother appeared. She had clearly been having a nap and was not yet fully awake. Her plump face was creased from the pillow, her hair a tousled mess.

‘We have a warrant to search these premises,’ Sigurdur Óli announced, ‘though we would rather you let us in voluntarily. And we need to speak to your husband, Thórarinn. Do you know where he might be?’

The woman did not answer.

‘We would rather do this with the minimum of unpleasantness,’ Finnur said.

The woman seemed to be taking a long time to wake up.

‘What … what do you want with him?’ she asked, her voice drugged with sleep.

Sigurdur Óli was not prepared to enter into any further discussion at this point. Ordering his men to follow, he ushered the girls carefully aside and entered the house, the woman retreating before him. The search was soon in full swing, with the officers on the lookout for bloodstained or torn clothing, drugs, cash, a list of clients, anything that could be linked to the attack on Lína or give a clue as to its motive. The youngest girl was discovered asleep in her parents’ bed. Her mother woke her and took her into another room. The woman did not seem unduly surprised by this invasion nor did she raise any objections; merely stood in silence with her daughters, watching a group of policemen turning her home upside down. The house was exceptionally neat and tidy, with clean laundry folded in all the drawers, everything in the kitchen put away, all the surfaces dusted. There were no signs of affluence: the ornaments on the tables in the sitting room were cheap, the three-piece suite shabby. If Thórarinn made any money from his drug-dealing it was certainly not evident in his home, and the only vehicle registered in his name was the delivery van.