House of Evidence (27 page)

A
t the hospital, Hrefna, Jóhann, and Sigurdur were waiting silently to see a doctor—each lost in their own thoughts. Finally Hrefna looked up at Sigurdur and asked, “Are you tired?”

Sigurdur shot her cagey look before admitting he was.

“Elísabet told us that you had gone to Birkihlíd last Wednesday,” she continued. “All you have to do is to tell us a story that matches hers. Then the two of you are in the clear.”

“First I want to speak to Ella,” he said soberly.

“That doesn’t work. We need identical testimony without you having compared stories. Otherwise it’s no good.”

“How do I know that you’re not bluffing?”

“Ella’s story is very innocent. Confirming it shouldn’t harm you in any way.”

Sigurdur thought about what she had said. “Oh, well, okay. Ella had written this text and she wanted me to write a song to it. She was trying to explain what sort of geezer this granddad of hers had been. She thought I’d understand her better if we were to go to the house and have a look around. She didn’t want this uncle of hers to know about it, so we went in when the old housemaid went out shopping. But then Ella began to feel a bit weird, so we hurried back out, really more or less straightaway.”

“Do you remember touching anything in there?”

“I was just looking at things in the parlor, some stamps in a frame, and then I opened the piano and played a few chords to hear what it sounded like. It was the only thing that interested me in there.”

“The poem Ella wrote, do you know it off by heart?”

Sigurdur smiled wanly. “Well, at least the first verse. I finished writing the song while I was over in Ólafsvík.”

“Let’s hear it.”

Sigurdur pondered the request for a beat. He seemed to be singing the song in his head, but then he recited the first verse out loud.

“Awake I lie, and wintry visions
within life’s path to me appear;
as bitter winds they blow, to weaken
the boldness of your yesteryear.”

Although Hrefna had only heard the verse once, she knew it well enough to recognize that he had recited it correctly. “Why did you bolt when they came to pick you up for questioning last Thursday evening?”

“It’s probably in the blood.”

“Have you got something on your conscience?”

“No, my conscience is clear, but my experience with the police is lousy.”

“How come?”

“How come! Lots of reasons. When I was growing up in the west part of town, on Brekkustígur, my family was virtually starving. My two elder brothers occasionally nicked stuff from vegetable gardens or fish sheds for us to have something to eat.
Sometimes they were spotted—they weren’t exactly master criminals at twelve and thirteen. This meant that the whole lot of us was branded as thieves, so that whenever as much as a bucket of shit disappeared from a piss house in the west of town, the cops came looking to us. When I was ten, my teacher gave me his old guitar. The next time the cops came they took the guitar from me, figuring it must have been stolen. My teacher had to go down to the station himself to get it back for me.”

Hrefna asked no more questions, and they sat in silence until the doctor was ready to see them. He took a look at Sigurdur’s hands and decided to send him for an X-ray. Hrefna and Jóhann returned to the waiting room. “What do we do now?” Hrefna asked.

“Go home and have a rest,” Jóhann replied. “Apparently it’s Sunday today. I’ll wait for the guy and drive him home. You can take a taxi.”

“Okay, I’ll go home but not to a rest; I’ve got to keep reading old Jacob’s diaries.”

Diary XVI

September 19, 1938. I have been collecting new foreign material about railroads in order to write an article for
Morgunbladid.
There are a few aspects that I intend to focus on: trains’ superiority lies in the fact that they can carry heavier loads and go faster than automobiles; those automobiles that can go faster than trains do so purely for the purpose of sport, and have no practical value; the best modern passenger motor cars only match the speed of trains
provided that all conditions are perfect and the road is hard and as smooth as an egg…

October 2, 1938. Went to church this morning. The pastor prayed for peace in Europe. It has to be said, though, that the outlook is much improved after the Munich Agreement. Rarely has the world seen the outlook take a more rapid turn for the better. There seemed to be no room for negotiations when, suddenly, everything cleared. We have the leaders of the major nations to thank for this successful outcome, and there is no doubt that they were influenced by a public that is completely set against war…

January 10, 1939. I have had informal talks with members of the government about a foreign exchange license for railroad materials. It has been an uphill struggle, but I have made some progress. The ministers know that I am not a member of their party, which dampens their willingness to help, even if they see this as a useful project that will benefit the nation. The city mayor has agreed that I should renew the railway track from the harbor to Öskjuhlíd. It will have to be widened by ten centimeters…

February 21, 1939. I obtained a foreign exchange transfer to purchase cross ties from Norway. To
simplify things, I am referring to this as timber for building. A large part of the capital stock will be used for this purchase, and I will have to rely on loans to buy the steel. I am going to test the waters in Copenhagen, as the District Heating Company did…

March 1, 1939. Today a new commercial agreement between Iceland and Germany comes into effect. It is a good deal more advantageous than in previous years. Our export to Germany of a variety of producer goods is being increased, and the frozen fish quota has been scaled up. I have no doubt that this will facilitate my plans for purchasing rails…

March 26, 1939. My struggle continues to be arduous, this time as a result of the German airline Lufthansa’s request to operate a weekly service to Iceland. The government immediately announced that, given the current volatile political situation, they would not grant such a license. I have been asked if the railroad operation will be subject to the same limitations, but I naturally reply that the Iceland Railroad Company is a purely Icelandic company, in no way linked to Germany. The company’s dealings with German businesses are completely normal in all respects. The communists have stirred up a great fuss about
the influence and rapacity of Germans here in Iceland, and have fantasized about Nazi sympathy among Icelanders.

April 18, 1939. A new government, an all-party national coalition, came into power today. The hope is that import restrictions will be lifted and foreign exchange regulations revised. I listened to the ministers’ statements, but otherwise the public gallery was half-empty…

April 25, 1939. I have still not received the import license for the steel for rails. In the meantime, I am postponing the shipping of the cross ties. There is no point in spending money on that part of it unless all the material can be brought into the country…

May 20, 1939. Visited the new German Consul-General, who arrived in Iceland earlier this month. He is very familiar with my work on the railroad and wished me well. He assured me that people’s fear of confrontation because of the Danzig dispute was unnecessary…

June 20, 1939. The photograph Matthías took of our train in Hamburg arrived in the post this morning. I showed it to Thórdur and Kristján but then locked it away. Now is not the right moment to talk about this…

July 25, 1939. Whenever two people meet here in town, they talk about the omens of war. I still do not believe that it will come to that, despite all the threats. The leaders of the major nations will think twice before inflicting such horror on their peoples again. I dare not even think about the effect war would have on our work on the railroad…

September 1, 1939.
Morgunbladid
today publishes Hitler’s “sixteen points” regarding Danzig. The first one is that the city should be handed back to the Germans immediately and unconditionally. There are also reports that Polish soldiers have crossed the German border in Silesia and captured a radio station. I told Elizabeth that there would be war…

September 3, 1939. News came in the early afternoon that Britain and France have declared war on Germany…

September 20, 1939. I am following the news about the confrontation in Poland. This will end in disaster. Elizabeth is very listless and fears for our future. I tell her not to worry; I shall make sure she never wants for anything…

September 26, 1939. At the shareholder meeting this morning, it was decided to put the rail enterprise
on hold until after the war. All prices have rocketed, and business dealings are subject to all manner of conditions. Shipping is also treacherous. Hopefully this will only last a few months…

H
alldór had at last managed to get a search warrant from the criminal court for Matthías’s home, but he needed someone to go with him. Unfortunately, everybody seemed to be busy.

The phone rang. It was Egill.

“Now we’re in deep shit,” he said, sounding unhinged, which was unusual for him.

“Oh?”

“Marteinn and I took the guy to Sídumúli as agreed, and that went pretty well; he seemed calm and under control on the way there. But when we were about to stick him in a cell, he freaked out and lost it completely. He screamed and howled.”

“I hope you decided not to lock him up,” Halldór said anxiously.

“Not lock him up?” Egill repeated. “No, was that what we should have done?”

“He could have waited here while we searched the apartment,” Halldór said, exasperated.

“I didn’t think of that,” Egill said quietly.

“Right, so what happened then?”

“Well, it took three of us to get him into the cell and lay him down. We cuffed him before we went out and the duty
officer phoned the doctor because he was shivering and shaking all over.”

“What did the doctor say?” Halldór asked, uneasily.

“The doctor never came, because when we looked in on him a bit later he had puked and was unconscious, so we immediately called an ambulance. I’m at the hospital now.”

“How is he doing?” Halldór asked.

“That’s the deep-shit part. He’s dead,” Egill said.

“What! Are you telling me that the prisoner is dead?”

“Yeah, the doctor thinks he probably had a stroke.”

“My god. What have you done?” Halldór groaned.

“I haven’t done anything,” Egill exclaimed. “It was just bloody unlucky, but we can fix this. We just quickly search his home, find the gun, and prove that the bugger shot both father and son. Then nobody can blame us.”

“Egill!” Halldór cried. “You get into the office right now. I don’t even want you going to the john without asking my permission. Do you understand me?”

“All right then. If that’s what you want…” His voice trailed off.

Slamming the phone down, Halldór snatched the search warrant and threw it into his bottom desk drawer. He sat motionless for a long time. There was a procedure the police had to follow when a prisoner died in custody.

He picked the phone up and dialed the number for the chief of police.

Diary XVII

January 1, 1940. On this first day of the year it seems a good idea to sit down and look back at the past
and think about the future. People’s opinions are very divided about independence. There are voices that maintain that Icelanders are too poor and too few to take charge of their foreign affairs.
Prima facie
, this seems a reasonable argument, but it is not a new one. It has always been put forward against every demand that Icelanders have made on Denmark for increased liberty…

February 11, 1940. The German Consul-General called me to a meeting this morning. He asked me to assist him with the gathering of information, as the embassy has become very isolated because of the war. I asked if he was expecting me to spy on my own nation. He said he didn’t mean that at all. “Embassies are supposed to monitor developments in their host countries and file reports on them. That is what they are there for,” the consul said. I replied that I was much too busy, and was about to leave when he stopped me and said that my brother Matthías had been arrested in Hamburg for planning to leave the country illegally and without identification papers. The German partners in Isländische Bahn have complained to the authorities about developments in the business, and they hold Matthías responsible. The steelworks that sold us
the rails have not received any payment in spite of having had a number of assurances. Naturally, I became angry on hearing these words, as it is Hitler’s warmongering that has caused all this trouble. It was the onset of hostilities that stopped loans, both domestic and foreign, to the railway as well as foreign currency transfers. I told him that this disaster was going to bankrupt me. Finally, I asked him to use his influence to have Matthías released, because he was simply my representative in this matter. I also said it was essential that my relationship with the embassy does not in any way give rise to suspicion. He must understand this…

April 9, 1940. A German force is reported to have invaded Denmark today…

April 10, 1940. A parliamentary session was held overnight, and two resolutions were passed unanimously. Foreign affairs and all powers exercised by the Danish Crown in Iceland are to be assumed by the government…the Norwegians are still resisting the German invasion…