Black Skies (35 page)
Authors: Arnaldur Indridason
He had been sleeping badly recently, still worked up about the events of the last few days. So when he woke at the crack of dawn, he had decided to go for a drive and, without realising it, found himself outside Gudmunda’s block of flats, although he had told his mother he was done with guarding her postbox. Gagga had rung him, curious about the arrests of the bankers, which she had heard about on the news, and kept asking questions about Súsanna and Patrekur, whom she knew. He had fobbed her off. ‘I’ll tell you later,’ he said.
His thoughts turned to the conversation he had had with Elínborg.
She
had rung him, worried about Erlendur, who was still travelling somewhere out east – in his birthplace – and had not been in contact for over a fortnight.
‘What’s he doing out there?’ asked Elínborg.
‘No idea,’ replied Sigurdur Óli. ‘He never tells me anything.’
‘Do you know how long he intended to be away?’
‘No. Just that he wanted to be left alone.’
‘Yes, that’s exactly it,’ said Elínborg.
Sigurdur Óli yawned. As on the previous Sunday mornings, there was hardly anyone about and the few people who did appear, either on their way home after a night out or popping out to the bakery, did not so much as glance at the newspaper. He began to nod, his eyelids grew heavy, his breathing slowed and, without warning, he fell asleep.
While he was slumbering peacefully, a scruffy-looking individual of about fifty, hair sticking up on end and clad in a threadbare dressing gown, tiptoed down the staircase, opened the door to the lobby, peered out into the car park, then grabbed the paper and hurried back inside, vanishing up the stairs.
Sigurdur Óli slept for at least three-quarters of an hour and it took him several minutes to surface. The radio was emitting a familiar beat as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He looked around the car park, stretched his arms and yawned, then caught sight of a man who looked much like Andrés walking along the pavement, heading west on Kleppsvegur.
Sigurdur Óli sat up in his seat to get a better view.
There was no mistaking: it was Andrés.
He had already opened the door to jump out and run after him when he changed his mind. Shutting the door again he started the engine, drove out of the car park and began to shadow Andrés. He had to make a U-turn at the next junction and was afraid of losing him but quickly located him again, a stooped figure, apparently in
another
world, trudging along the coast road, past Kirkjusandur and the bus depot, across Kringlumýrarbraut and into Borgartún. He was carrying a plastic bag and wearing the same ragged clothes as before. Sigurdur Óli considered hailing him for a word but curiosity stopped him.
If Andrés was not living at home, where was he hiding?
Andrés walked up Nóatún, into the Laugavegur shopping street, past the bus station at Hlemmur, then turned south along Snorrabraut, before heading down Grettisgata in the direction of the old city centre. Sigurdur Óli had no difficulty following him but was careful to maintain his distance. He turned slowly into Grettisgata and crawled along the street until he found a parking space, then parked as quickly as he could, before trotting after Andrés, still keeping a little way behind him. Ahead, he saw Andrés turn abruptly and descend the steps to the basement of an old wooden house that had seen better days, where he opened the door with a key, then closed it behind him.
Sigurdur Óli halted and examined the house. It looked tumble-down, neglected, the corrugated-iron cladding covered in rust and large patches of worn paint, leaving it vulnerable to the wind and weather. The house consisted of one storey and a basement, but the ground floor looked unoccupied.
After waiting for about twenty minutes, he decided to knock at the door and climbed carefully down the steps which were crumbling dangerously. The door was unmarked and there was no bell. Sigurdur Óli knocked vigorously several times, then waited. He noticed a foul odour, like the stench of rotten fish.
No reply. He knocked on the door again, calling Andrés’s name, then waited.
Pressing his ear to the door, he heard a faint noise inside. He called out to Andrés again, and after knocking loudly for the third time without receiving any answer, he decided to try to force his
way
in. The lock was old and rattled when Sigurdur Óli took hold of the handle, and gave way easily beneath the weight of his shoulder. He stopped in the open doorway and called Andrés’s name again before moving further into the flat.
The stench hit him like a wall, causing him to gasp and stagger back outside onto the steps.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he exclaimed.
He was wearing a scarf round his neck and, using this to cover his nose and mouth, he made a second attempt. He found himself in a small hall and located a light switch which did not work, so he assumed the electricity supply had been cut off. He called Andrés’s name again but to no avail. From what he could see, the flat had been completely trashed. Holes had been smashed in the walls and here and there the floorboards had been torn up, forcing him to clamber over broken planks and furniture, aware all the time, in spite of his scarf, that the smell was intensifying the further he went. He stood still while adjusting to the gloom, repeatedly calling Andrés. Either he was hiding somewhere in the flat or he had escaped through a back door or window. Once Sigurdur Óli’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness he saw that he was standing in what was probably a living room, with thick curtains drawn across the window. He ripped them apart to let the light flood in.
The daylight revealed a scene of devastation: tables, chairs and cupboards lay strewn all over the place like matchwood, as if someone had driven a bulldozer right through the flat. Sigurdur Óli picked his way gingerly through the wreckage, and seeing in one corner a blanket, leftovers of food and empty
brennivín
bottles, assumed that this was where Andrés had been holed up. Returning to the hallway, he cautiously opened a door which turned out to lead to the kitchen. The scene was no less chaotic here and he observed that Andrés had probably made his escape by crawling out of the large window into the back garden.
He had lost him.
Sigurdur Óli threaded his way back into the living room, hardly able to endure the suffocating stench any longer, and was about to back out when he trod on something he thought was alive. He nearly jumped out of his skin.
Looking down, he saw that he had bumped into a foot belonging to a man who was lying on the floor covered by a dirty blanket, with only his legs protruding. Bending down, Sigurdur Óli slowly drew the blanket off the man and at last understood where the horrific smell was emanating from.
He pressed the scarf tight over his nose. The man was lying on his back, tied to a chair, as if he had fallen over backwards. His dead eyes, half open, stared up at him. In the middle of his forehead was an object that looked like a coin. A dirty piece of leather with straps hanging from it lay on the floor beside the body.
Sigurdur Óli remembered Andrés muttering about a krona piece and, curiosity overcoming all his professional instincts, he reached down to the coin, intending to pick it up, only to discover that it was fixed.
Moving closer, he realised that it was not a coin: the surface was smooth. Slowly it dawned on him that the metallic disc on the man’s forehead was the end of a spike that had been driven deep into his head.
The body was badly decomposed.
He reckoned the man had been dead for at least three months.
55
ON MONDAY MORNING
a groundsman for the Reykjavík cemeteries turned up to work in the old graveyard on Hólavallagata and unlocked one of the tool sheds. It was cold. There had been a heavy frost overnight and a northerly wind was blowing in off the highlands, but the man was well wrapped up in a woolly hat and thick mittens. He had a job to finish that he had been putting off, and now gathered the tools he thought he would need. He went about his business without hurrying, anticipating that the task would take him most of the morning. Once he had everything, he set off across the cemetery towards Sudurgata and the tomb of the independence hero, Jón Sigurdsson. Someone had used a spray can to write
Jonny rules
on the stone monument. He did not really object, taking it as a sign of the younger generation’s increased independence of mind. At least some idiot knew who Jón Sigurdsson was. Happening to glance to his left, the groundsman stopped short and peered across the graveyard: it looked as if a man was sitting against one of the tombstones. After watching him for some time without detecting any movement, he started
walking
slowly towards him and as he drew near he saw that the man was dead.
He was dressed in rags, covered with a shabby anorak, his knees clasped tight to his chest as if to ward off the cold. His deathly white face was turned, eyes half open, to the heavens, as if at the moment he died he had been looking up at the clouds, waiting for them to part for an instant to reveal a patch of clear blue sky.
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Epub ISBN 9781446485026
Published by Harvill Secker 2012
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Copyright © Arnaldur Indridason 2009
English translation copyright © Victoria Cribb 2012
Arnaldur Indridason has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
First published with the title
Svörtuloft
in 2009 by Forlagið, Reykjavík
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
H
ARVILL
S
ECKER
Random House
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA
Addresses for companies within The Random House Group Limited can be found at:
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN
9781846555817 (hardback)
ISBN
9781846555404 (trade paperback)