Oblivion (5 page)

Nanna nodded again. They decided it was time for her to accompany them to the morgue and Marion said she should prepare herself for the worst. They rose to their feet and Nanna fetched her coat and put on a woolly hat and gloves. They had sent advance warning to the pathologist who was standing ready beside the body when they arrived at Barónsstígur. It lay under a powerful lamp, covered in a white sheet. The pathologist greeted Nanna and also warned her about the state of the body. She listened in silence. Marion and Erlendur stood at her side.

One of the corpse’s arms was exposed. She didn’t touch it, as if unable to bring herself to, but stared down for a long while at the cold, lifeless hand; the unfamiliar blue pallor of the skin. She had received her confirmation.

‘It’s him,’ she whispered.

‘Are you sure?’ said Erlendur.

‘I recognise his hands. There’s no doubt, it’s him,’ she said, tentatively taking hold of the hand.

‘All right.’

‘He never listened to my nagging,’ she said.

‘About what?’

‘I was always going on at him not to bite his nails.’

HE WASN’T SURPRISED
that the woman should be momentarily lost for words when he said he was calling to see if he could have a word about her niece, Dagbjört, who had vanished one morning many years ago on her way to school. After a stunned silence, she asked him to say again who he was. He explained that his name was Erlendur, he was a detective, and he had come across her niece’s case in the police archives. As he was interested in missing persons, he wondered if he might visit her. He made it absolutely clear, to prevent any misunderstanding, that there had been no new developments and that the inquiry had not been reopened. His interest was purely personal. He omitted to say that he had in fact come across the girl’s case long before, shortly after joining the police, had read up on the background and often visited the relevant sites, consumed by curiosity. Nor did he tell her why, after all this time, he had finally, hesitantly, taken the step of contacting one of the girl’s relatives. He hardly knew. Some time ago he had promised himself not to pursue it, unwilling to expose himself to the pain associated with the disappearance of a loved one, yet in spite of that he had gone ahead. The obituaries for the girl’s father had made him think. In the end there would be no one left to tell what had happened. No one to provide answers to the questions about her disappearance that had so often plagued him. And perhaps worst of all: no one left waiting for those answers.

After a quarter of a century, the case had long faded from the public consciousness, but when he rang the girl’s aunt to explain his business, he realised that it was far from forgotten in that household. The woman was instantly on the ball. After bombarding him with questions about the case and his interest in it, she finally seemed satisfied that he was in earnest and invited him round to see her. Before she rang off, she thanked him for the call and his concern.

‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ said Erlendur once he had taken a seat in her living room. ‘I saw the obituary you wrote for your brother.’

She thanked him again, pushing back a lock of hair that had fallen over her forehead as she poured them both coffee. Her name was Svava, she was around seventy, and had prepared for his visit by baking
kleinur
and brewing strong coffee. She said she needed a pick-me-up too and offered him a glass of chartreuse which he accepted. She knocked hers straight back and refilled it immediately. The bottle was almost empty and he wondered if she often had recourse to pick-me-ups. He sipped his slowly. She had come across in their phone conversation as forceful and assertive; not someone who suffered fools gladly. She demanded straight answers and would not tolerate any beating about the bush. He did his best to satisfy her. He didn’t know much about her situation but got the impression she lived alone. A prominently placed photograph showed her beaming at the camera, flanked by three boys and a husband. He assumed her sons had long since flown the nest. He didn’t ask about the husband. Perhaps they were divorced. Or he was dead. She soon supplied the answer.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Yes, I felt I had to put a few words down on paper. Felt it would do me good. To write about my brother. It was his heart, you know. My husband went the same way four years ago. So, you’ve been interested in our Dagbjört for quite a while?’

‘Ever since I first read her files, about seven years ago,’ said Erlendur. ‘I don’t remember the actual events – I’m too young – but there was a good deal written about her disappearance at the time and I’ve read all of it, along with the police reports. About her route to school. The boyfriend she’s supposed to have had in Camp Knox.’

‘And what … do you think you can find out what happened?’

‘No, I’m not getting my hopes up,’ said Erlendur. ‘And neither should you.’

‘Then what’s the point of this meeting?’

‘I wanted to see you, to hear the family’s version of the story, if you’d be willing to share it with me,’ said Erlendur. ‘You mustn’t expect me to come up with any magic solution. I’m just …’

‘What?’

‘I’m just trying to get a handle on what happened,’ said Erlendur.

‘Out of curiosity?’

‘Yes, I’ll be frank with you – out of curiosity. I have a particular interest in this kind of case. I want to look into her story in more detail. In my own time. If I discover any new evidence, anything that might shed light on the mystery, naturally I’ll inform you and my colleagues in CID. I want to gather information about her disappearance and see if I can find a fresh angle. A quarter of a century has passed and soon it’ll be too late to … do anything.’

‘You mean there’ll be no one left for you to talk to?’

Erlendur nodded. ‘Both her parents are dead. When I read about your brother I thought to myself that if I was going to act, I couldn’t wait any longer. It was now or never.’

‘I see. You’re in a race against time.’

‘But as I said, you shouldn’t get your hopes up about any new leads. I can’t stress that strongly enough. Anyway, I think I’ve got a fairly clear picture of what happened, from the public point of view, but of course that’s only a fraction of the whole story.’

Svava studied Erlendur with searching grey eyes, sizing him up, trying to gauge whether she could trust him. She sensed that he had been honest with her, admitting his curiosity, laying his cards on the table. She felt this was important.

‘You’re a policeman,’ she said, ‘but you’re not here in an official capacity?’

‘No, and I’ll quite understand if you don’t want to talk to me.’

Svava smiled. ‘You’re very serious,’ she said, ‘for such a young man. Why are you … why are you doing this?’

Erlendur had no answer ready. Why was he doing this? Why couldn’t he leave well alone? Why did he have to reopen old wounds and wallow in grief and loss?’

‘Is it something to do with those mournful eyes of yours?’ she asked. ‘Has anyone ever told you? What beautiful eyes you’ve got?’

Erlendur was embarrassed; he hadn’t been prepared for this.

‘I’m just interested in missing-persons cases.’

‘Why?’

‘I have been for a long time. I’m fascinated by accounts of accidents and disasters. I come from the East Fjords where there are quite a few stories of that nature. They’ve always been part of my life.’

Instinct told her that he was no longer being completely honest, no longer telling the whole truth, and had closed off the small chink he had opened into his soul. He didn’t meet her eye as he answered her question but lowered his gaze to the table as if afraid she would interrogate him further. She changed the subject.

‘Are you married?’

‘No … no, I’m divorced.’

‘Oh, sorry to hear that.’

‘Yes. So … now you know plenty about me,’ Erlendur said, trying to smile. ‘Everything, really, so –’

‘I don’t believe that for a minute,’ said Svava, smiling in her turn. ‘But enough to be going on with. No one’s asked me about poor Dagbjört for years, then you ring up out of the blue. I won’t deny it’s a shock. You’re the first person to show the slightest interest in her for more than twenty years. So, what do you want to know? How can I be of help?’

SHE WAS JUST
eighteen when she vanished one dark winter’s day in ’53. Not long before, she had invited some school friends round to celebrate her birthday. The girls played records on the family’s recently acquired gramophone. She had helped her father carry it indoors. It came in an imposing piece of furniture – a large walnut box supported on four legs, with a lid on top and a built-in wireless – and this was given pride of place in the sitting room. They played records that had been released that spring – Alfred Clausen’s ‘Gling gló’, Sigfús Halldórsson’s ‘Dagný’. One of the girls brought round some of the new singles from America that she had managed to procure from the US airbase at Keflavík, including one by Kay Starr, and Doris Day singing ‘Be My Little Baby Bumble Bee’. The girls danced and giggled and, once Dagbjört’s parents were safely out of the way, two of them produced some alcohol they had pinched from home. They shared it round and someone took out a packet of cigarettes and started smoking. The cigarettes were passed round too, a few of the girls puffing and making faces, others inhaling with an air of sophistication. They chatted about the school camping trip to Thórsmörk earlier that autumn and the proposed skiing trip to Hveradalir in the highlands after New Year, and exchanged gossip about who was dating who and the latest exploits of various Hollywood stars. A Dean Martin film was currently showing in the cinemas. They preferred him to Frank Sinatra. As the evening wore on they sang their school song with its lyrics about a bright, happy future, and played Sigfús’s hit single over and over again: ‘…
the glorious stars will shine / on our love, our joy and delight, / though the song of the breeze has fallen quiet
.’

The girls were close friends and when one morning Dagbjört didn’t turn up to school or for the meeting a group of them had arranged for later that day, they rang her house to ask if she was ill. Dagbjört’s mother said no, she had gone to school as usual, at least as far as she knew. She called out to her daughter, went upstairs to her room, opened the front door and peered down the street, then stepped out into the garden, repeatedly calling her name. After this she phoned her husband at work and asked if he had heard from her or knew where she was. He was nonplussed. As far as he was aware, Dagbjört had gone to school that morning.

When they still hadn’t heard from her by evening, her parents grew seriously alarmed and went out looking for her. They phoned round all their friends and relatives, but no one had any news of their daughter. A number of people came to their house, among them several of Dagbjört’s classmates, neighbours and close relatives, and together they retraced her customary route to school. Perhaps something had happened to her on the way. They looked everywhere, walked the streets, climbed into gardens, conducted a thorough search of Camp Knox, combed the park and area around Lake Tjörnin and the streets at the lower end of Thingholt, near the school. By then the police had got their act together, though opinion at the station was that it was a little premature to call out the search parties. They asked if she had ever done anything like this before but the response was a firm negative: she had never disappeared without trace before. No need to worry too much, the parents were told; their daughter hadn’t even been missing twenty-four hours and there was every likelihood that she would turn up safe and sound before long.

But Dagbjört didn’t turn up. Twenty-four hours passed, then forty-eight, then seventy-two, and still there was no sign of her. Nothing she had said or done in the preceding days had given any clue to her possible movements that morning. She had been her usual self, bright and breezy, bursting with plans as always. She had informed her parents of her wish to continue her education, preferably in medicine, though there were few female doctors in the country at the time. She had told her mother that in the past decade only seven women had completed their medical training in Iceland.

‘So, as I’m sure you can imagine, it was an unspeakably awful time,’ Svava told Erlendur. ‘They said – my brother and his wife Helga – that it was out of the question that she could have taken her own life.’

‘What did they think had happened?’ asked Erlendur.

‘They couldn’t begin to understand it. They thought she must have been injured in some way. Maybe she’d walked along the shore, fallen in the sea and couldn’t save herself. Got swept out by the current. It was so bloody dark, of course – it was the end of November – and for reasons we don’t know she either decided not to go to school and went somewhere else instead or was intercepted on the way. Accepted a lift perhaps. Had some sort of run-in with somebody. We pictured all kinds of situations she could have got into but of course we hadn’t really the faintest idea what happened.’

‘If she had gone somewhere other than school, where might it have been?’

‘I suppose it’s just possible she walked out to Nauthólsvík cove. Went for a swim in the hot water. But that’s clutching at straws. She was young, she loved life and had never shown any hint of depression or anxiety – quite the reverse – she had a very positive outlook, was doing well at school, had a good gang of friends. Her parents said she looked forward to school every day.’

‘There was nothing wrong with the weather that morning, was there?’ asked Erlendur. ‘No chance she’d have had to urgently seek shelter?’

‘No, it was frosty and still,’ said Svava. ‘They combed all the shores here, all the way south to the Reykjanes Peninsula. Never found a thing.’

Svava poured them both more coffee. Erlendur still hadn’t touched his freshly baked doughnut.

‘There was talk of a diary,’ said Erlendur, remembering this detail from the police files. It had not helped the inquiry as it had turned out to contain nothing but the musings and dreams of a growing girl, incidents from school life, books she was reading for her studies and her opinions of the various subjects. The occasional comment about her teachers and fellow pupils, all very innocent. She had also stuck in cuttings from the papers, pictures of actors and so on.