House of Evidence (25 page)

H
refna slept longer than she had intended, but was nevertheless lucky: when she got to the students’ residence, Elísabet was still asleep in her room.

“There are some things that have emerged in the investigation of your uncle’s murder that we need to find a credible explanation for. I think you may be able to help me,” Hrefna explained once inside Elísabet’s room.

“What do you mean?” Elísabet asked, lighting a cigarette.

“I have been tipped off that you have more than a casual relationship with Sigurdur Sigurdsson, the son of Sigurdur Jónsson.”

Elísabet looked defiantly at Hrefna. “Yeah, Diddi and I are good friends.”

“Why didn’t you tell me when we spoke before?”

“It would probably have shocked Mom. She doesn’t even know I’m going out with a guy, let alone this guy. But I can’t see that it has anything to do with your investigation.”

“We have firm proof that Sigurdur was in Birkihlíd on the evening Jacob was murdered.”

“What proof?”

“I’m not discussing that with you.”

Elísabet inhaled the smoke deeply and then blew it out forcefully. “If I tell you that the reason for his being there was completely normal and had nothing to do with the murder, would that be enough?”

“No,” Hrefna replied, shaking her head.

Elísabet was quiet for a few moments.

“Okay. I’ll try and explain this a bit better. When I was younger and my mom and I came for a visit to Birkihlíd, I sometimes used to read Grandpa Jacob’s diaries. He died a long time before I was born, of course, but I felt I got to know him through those books. It always seemed so sad to me how he dedicated his life to that railroad, but never saw his dreams come true. He was so talented that he should have been able to make his mark in any field in the community, but instead he ends up in this blind alley. Do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah, I have also read the diaries.”

“Well. I’ve been dabbling in writing poetry since starting college, and Diddi has written music to a few of them. He plays the guitar, you see.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I wanted to write a poem that described Grandpa’s destiny. It’s almost ready and I asked Diddi for a song. I had to try and describe Grandpa to him, naturally, and Birkihlíd was the best place to do that. I also wanted to show him the diaries. I knew what time Sveinborg goes shopping on Wednesdays, and we were waiting outside when she went. I had my key from when I was supposed to be living there.”

“So you both went in?”

“Yes, for a little while. We just went through the main rooms, and Diddi sat down at the piano and played a few chords. And then I just felt a bit weird, and we went back outside. That was all.”

“Where can I find Sigurdur and get him to confirm this?”

“I don’t know. He was going somewhere out into the country to play a gig, Ólafsvík, I think. Then he was planning to work in
the freezing plant for a few days if there was any work available. I haven’t heard anything from him since the day before yesterday.”

Hrefna decided her story was implausible enough to be true. “Let me hear the poem,” she said.

Elísabet bit her lip. “Okay,” she replied, and then recited it confidently.

“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.

“You nursed a hope, though no man saw
unknown the checks that hindered you.
Striving, dreaming, strong-willed, more,
yet still the aim was never true.”

Elísabet fell silent, awaiting Hrefna’s reaction.

“I believe you,” Hrefna finally said.

Elísabet sighed in relief.

“Tell me about your visits to Birkihlíd when you were a child,” Hrefna asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Just anything you can remember.”

Elísabet thought for a moment and then said, “At Christmas we either came south to Reykjavik or Granny and Uncle Jacob came north to us. That’s how it always was until Granny died. Mom and I also visited Granny every summer for a couple of weeks or so.”

“Tell me about your grandmother,” Hrefna asked.

“Granny was an amazing lady. She always spoke English to us, but she understood Icelandic perfectly. Mom speaks English like a native and she often spoke it to me when I was little, so I could also understand Granny. We got on very well, even though she was very determined and wanted to control everybody.”

“How was life at your grandmother’s?”

“Everything was very fixed. Mealtimes, for instance, were exactly on time because Granny was a stickler for routine. She always went for a walk at the same time, and always walked the same route. Then she had a nap in the early afternoon.”

“What about Jacob Junior?”

“The strange thing is I don’t remember him very well. He worked in the bank and then spent evenings in his study. He had no idea how to deal with children, and I think he avoided me when I came to visit.”

“Would you say he was normal?” Hrefna asked.

“What’s normal? Uncle Jacob was an intelligent and well-educated man. He didn’t have much in common with most
people, but he was the victim of extraordinary circumstances, given the violent death of his father.”

“Have you any idea why he was killed?”

“No, I don’t. It actually seems completely absurd to me…and tragic. Not because I mourn him so much, but that anyone could have been driven to kill such a man.”

“What were his relations with the rest of the family like?”

“Very good while Granny was alive. We all knew that he sacrificed himself for her, but after she died his eccentricity became unbearable.”

“Tell me more about your grandmother. Did you feel happy in her company when you were a child?” Hrefna asked.

“Yes, I was always happy with her. Many of my first memories are from Birkihlíd.”

“Tell me about them.”

“They’re just childhood memories,” she replied. “There’s one that I’ve always been very fond of. In Granny’s little bookcase, there were a few English women’s magazines that I looked through over and over again. Granny was sitting on a chair and I lay on the floor, leafing through them. I remember they all featured various cartoon strips, but because there were only single copies of this or that magazine, I had to imagine the stories before and after the installment that I had. I told Granny this, and she helped me improvise the stories. I remember one of the cartoons very well. It was about a boy and a girl who were lost in a dark enchanted forest. Suddenly, in the last picture, there was a white horse with a big horn sticking out of its forehead. In my version, the horse took the boy and the girl on his back and fought all the evil things in the forest with his horn. Then he brought them back home to their granny and grandpa. I sometimes dreamed of the white horse with the horn, and they were good dreams. If I was unhappy, all I needed was to think about the white horse with the horn…the white unicorn.”

“Were you aware that your grandmother wanted to keep the home unchanged, as it had been when your grandfather was alive?” Hrefna asked.

“That’s simply how it was. She didn’t particularly try to, she was just happy in the house as it was and there was no need to change anything. It wasn’t a compulsion like it became with Uncle Jacob later.”

“Did she keep in contact with her relatives in England?”

“Yes, she did, all her life. She visited them almost every year until the final years, when she had to be careful with her money.”

“Did your grandmother talk about Jacob Senior…your grandfather?”

“Yes, she often told me stories of what they did together, especially their travels. As I got older, she showed me the diaries, and I really enjoyed reading them.”

“Did you read all the diaries?”

“No, not the books after 1932. They were not with the others.”

“Did you ask your grandmother about them?”

“Yes, but she wouldn’t show them to me.”

“Do you know why that was?”

“She said that I wouldn’t understand some of the things in them. I just accepted that and didn’t ask anymore. I never doubted anything Granny told me. She always knew best.”

“What can you tell me about your uncle Matthías?”

“About Matthías? What do you mean?”

“What was the relationship between him and the family like?”

“There was no relationship, apart from a letter at Christmas. But Grandpa Jacob often mentioned him in the diaries and seems to have really appreciated him.”

“Have you met him recently?”

“No, I haven’t tried to get to know him. Most of my interests lie outside the family. But I was pleased that he stood
up to Uncle Jacob. Mom was getting really fed up with this compulsion of his.”

“Do you know Klemenz, his manservant?”

“No. I find all that rather unpleasant. One person waiting on another for years on end doesn’t fit my worldview. I’m quite a bit more radical than this family of mine.”

“You said that you had begun to feel a bit weird in Birkihlíd when you went in there with Sigurdur. In what way?”

“I don’t know. It’s never happened before; maybe it was some kind of premonition.”

Diary XV

January 14, 1936. 11 degrees of frost. Walked on the ice across Skerjafjördur from Skildinganes over to Álftanes and back. The ice is thick enough to walk on everywhere…

February 4, 1936. A letter from Helmut Klee. He has arranged for two railroad engineers to visit me this summer to examine the route and go over my plans. I shall write to him and ask him to keep this scheme quiet. This will be a sensitive issue on account of the political situation. The best way to deal with it is for the men to pretend to be geologists who are here to study Icelandic minerals…

February 10, 1936. A secret meeting of the Monarchy Society. All four were present…

March 6, 1936. Plans are afoot for a new motor road between Reykjavik and the southern lowlands. The route lies through the Reykjanesskagi uplands, Krísuvík, and Selvogur, about 115 km in total. The only positive thing about these plans is that they are so stupid that they may enable me to boost interest in the railroad, should they come to fruition. Nobody is going to travel all this way in a motor if a 60-km railroad journey is available instead…

June 26, 1936. Today
Morgunbladid
published an interview with a famous Danish editor who has been staying here recently in connection with the Royal State visit. He says: “I am convinced that it will never be possible to achieve real progress in developing these regions without building a railroad from Reykjavik to the east so that this country’s main agricultural areas may enjoy truly low cost and secure transport of freight. It is a fallacy that motor roads can replace railroads. In order for farmers in the southern lowlands to be competitive with their products in foreign markets, they must have as secure and cheap transport as, for instance, Danish farmers have.” Our perceptive visitor continues in this vein at some length. I cut the article out and keep it with the other material. I am going to
translate it into German and send it abroad. It is clear that it will be left to foreigners to make my fellow countrymen see sense in this matter…

July 10, 1936. The Germans came with the
Brúarfoss
this morning. I asked Kristján to meet them, and they will be staying at Hotel Ísland. One of them speaks excellent Danish; his family comes from Flensborg…

July 12, 1936. The German visitors were here with me today going through drawings and calculations. They are astute men and quick to understand figures. They dined with us…

July 13, 1936. We set off early, heading east. We are somewhat cramped in the motor as we are carrying a considerable amount of baggage. At Kolvidarhóll, Kristján and the Germans got out to journey on foot, while I continue by motor and will meet up with them further east. Kristján will show them the route for the railroad…We took accommodation at Lake Laugarvatn…

July 14, 1936. After a hard day, we have arrived at Lake Hvítárvatn. Here our ways part. Kristján will guide the visitors on foot through Kjölur. I will motor back to meet them in the north. I dread traveling this route on my own. It is a poor road…

W
hen the team met after lunch, everyone was exhausted apart from Jóhann. He had finished early the previous evening, gone to the cinema, and turned in at a reasonable hour.

Hrefna had read the diaries well into the night, and then gone to see Elísabet that morning already. Halldór did not offer any explanation for his exhaustion, but a poor night of sleep was evident by the dark circles that seemed to stretch from under his eyes down to his cheeks. And Egill and Marteinn had left Ólafsvík at seven that morning, having spent an uncomfortable night in a police cell. They had then driven to Reykjavik without stopping and taken Sigurdur Sigurdsson, who refused to utter a word, straight to the jail at Sídumúli.

After they all reported their findings, Jóhann confirmed that the parcel of documents in the safe at Birkihlíd was the one Thórdur had recently delivered to Jacob Junior.

“There is one very interesting thing about these documents,” Jóhann added. “Alfred Kieler’s will names his son Jacob as the sole heir. In other words, Jacob Senior inherited the house and contents, and all other property. Matthías is not even mentioned in the document.”

“And yet Matthías claims to own half of Birkihlíd,” Halldór remarked. “I’ll have to talk some more with him today.”

“Could it be they were going by a later will?” Hrefna suggested.

“Hardly,” Jóhann replied. “This one was dated 1929, just a year before Alfred died.”

“What about the ammunition in the safe? Have you examined that?” Halldór asked.

“Yes,” Jóhann replied. “There were, in all, twenty-odd different types of ammunition for various firearms, amongst them one packet of rounds for a 38/200 Smith and Wesson.”

“That’s interesting,” Halldór said.

Jóhann continued, “It doesn’t really tell us much, because there were many types of cartridge that don’t fit the firearms found in the house.”

After Egill finished describing their arduous trip to Ólafsvík, Hrefna snapped, “This journey of yours was totally unnecessary. You could have sorted this matter with one phone call.”

Egill bridled. “The only fingerprints from the scene of the murder belong to this guy and you would have phoned him up!” he replied angrily.

“I have been given a completely satisfactory explanation for those fingerprints,” Hrefna said smugly.

Halldór turned to her. “You go and talk to the guy,” he said. “Maybe you’ll get something out of him. Jóhann will go with you and take a new set of prints.”

Hrefna drove in silence to Sídumúli, and when the jailer admitted them, she asked if the prisoner was asleep. He told her he doubted that, as Egill had ordered he be kept handcuffed.

“Bring him out here at once,” she said, clearly angered at Egill’s overzealousness.

The young man whom the jailer led out into the corridor looked tired. His hands were cuffed behind his back, and he shook as Hrefna removed the manacles. Jóhann examined the prisoner’s wrists, which were badly bruised, asking, “Did they keep you cuffed in the car all the way from Ólafsvík?”

The prisoner looked at them with disdain, and then nodded.

“We’ll start by taking him to the ER to have this looked at,” Jóhann told Hrefna. “He can get an injury release there. We don’t need to bring him back here.”

Out in the parking lot, the prisoner looked around, sizing up the surroundings.

“You can run if you like,” Jóhann said. “But you’ll do better coming with us.”

Sigurdur looked Jóhann in the eye for a moment, then relaxed and climbed into the backseat of their car.

“Are you going to take a new set of prints?” Hrefna asked Jóhann on the way to the hospital.

“No. I didn’t even bring the kit.”

Diary XV

October 2, 1936. I have been making tentative approaches to the government as to what its reactions would be to the railroad company’s initiative. I was not at all happy with the response. I feel that their policy is to strengthen the power of the state in every way, at the cost of individual freedom of enterprise. It is going to be difficult to obtain foreign exchange licenses for purchases of railroad supplies…

December 9, 1936. Thórdur and I discussed the railroad today. He is rather pessimistic about the idea, but is objective. He is careful by nature so this is understandable. Despite his tendency to discourage, he nevertheless proposes workable solutions. Kristján supports me wholeheartedly…

February 15, 1937. It distresses me how some Icelandic newspapers deprecate the regime in Germany under the swastika, often out of ignorance. Left-wing propaganda depicts the situation there as simply vile and cruel. The English present a different view. I have been reading the English newspapers that were sent to Elizabeth, and these generally report the Germans in a positive light, even considering them a model nation. The English do not consider it shameful to do justice to their political opponents. The number of people who believe in the one-sided fanatical writings of the communists is dwindling, of course. The Germans have been friendly to us Icelanders for a long time, devoting themselves to Icelandic studies and writing numerous books about the country and its nation. “Diverse our passions…”

March 20, 1937. The German Consul-General summoned me for a meeting today. Enquiries have
come through from Germany about me and my company. The Consul is a pleasant and polite official. I told him of my plans and answered his questions. He said he would try to be of assistance to me…

April 14, 1937. I have now drawn up a schedule for the best procedure to carry forward the railroad business. The first section of track will be very short, only going from the harbor to Öskjuhlíd. We will also begin construction of the main railroad station. When this is ready, a locomotive and freight wagons will be shipped to Iceland. We shall be able to utilize these wagons later, for further construction works on the railroad. To begin with, the largest gravel quarry will be at Öskjuhlíd; then we shall head bit by bit east, pressing on until we reach Akureyri. I shall go north this summer to do some surveying.

May 6, 1937. Have just had a meeting with the consul. He has put together an extremely clever proposal for how the German industrialists can participate in our railroad business. A limited company called Isländische Bahn AG will be established in Germany. It will own the trains and lease them out to the Iceland Railroad Company. This way the Germans can invest funds in the project
without incurring outlay of foreign currency. In return, the railroad company will purchase steel for the tracks from Germany. We both feel that this arrangement could be very practical for both parties…

June 24, 1937. Today we were surveying the Vatnsskard Pass. Kristján knows this area very well, and is of great assistance to me. The road from Bólstadarhlíd in Svartárdalur no longer snakes round in countless corners and bends, as it did the last time I traveled here. The new motor road follows the slopes mostly straight, after a turn by the river. It seems to me that the railroad should go somewhat below the road in a lengthy cutting to limit the gradient. There is a wonderful view from the bridge, into Svartárdalur Valley with mountains on all sides…

June 25, 1937. There will be an important railroad station at Varmahlíd. The inhabitants here welcome me with open arms. Chatting with a farmer, I reminisced about my trip round this region in the year of my high school graduation, and I asked him about the ferryman at the western lagoon who gave me the brennivín. The farmer told me he was known as Jón Ferryman and that he had drowned
in the estuary in 1914. Probably drowned himself deliberately…

June 26, 1937. Carried on into Blönduhlíd. There will be no problems with the railroad here provided it is a suitable distance from the river…

August 5, 1937. Have decided to postpone my trip abroad until next summer…