Snowblind (25 page)

Karl was on his way out of town. He had a lift to Akureyri. He had taken a job with an old friend, intending to stay there for a while, before making any further decisions.

He hadn’t taken very seriously Tómas’s request not to leave town. He was hoping to get away without being prosecuted – he’d always been lucky on that score.

He left most of Linda’s possessions behind in the flat, taking with him only things of value, not wanting to carry too much baggage – either physical or metaphorical. It was a bastard losing out on that ten million in insurance. That would have been handy to have.

He never really understood why Linda had stuck with him, even though he treated her so badly. Beat her up more than once, well, quite a few times. He had of course been charming at first, lured her in. Of course he’d never told her about his dark deeds in the past. He had the feeling that she had always been trying to save him. She was too kind for her own good. And he’d probably never see her again, the doctors said she wouldn’t recover and he had no intention of going to Reykjavík for a final visit.

The news coverage on him in recent days hadn’t been favourable, and he would probably have to leave the country sooner rather than later. It was clear that public opinion had already decided that he was guilty.

The car went through the tunnel and Karl didn’t look back. He’d never see that ice-cold town again, if he could help it.

Leifur felt pleased with himself after the performance. The audience seemed to like him. And, to his surprise, he had even found himself enjoying the limelight. Perhaps he would now seek more time on stage rather than off for the next play. He had stepped out of his comfort zone and it had felt good. At the reception he had even walked up to Anna and asked her out. She had politely turned him down. But at least he had tried. And tomorrow he would go down to the police station and formally ask Tómas and his colleagues to look again into the hit-and-run that had killed his brother. Of course, deep down, he knew nothing would come out of it – too many years had passed. But he felt he needed some sort of closure, and then he could try, really try, to move on with his life.

Since the news had broken about Karl’s alleged offences, Anna had been aware of her own lucky escape. She hadn’t spoken to him since and had no intention of meeting him again. She hoped he had already left town. Thankfully their relationship hadn’t become public knowledge. And hopefully it would remain a secret, although secrets had an awkward habit of coming to the surface in a small town like this. Until then, she was determined to focus on the job at the school and felt excited at the prospect. Surprisingly, that timid bloke, Leifur, had come on to her after the play – in his very shy way of course. Rather cute of him, she thought, but she had decided to keep clear of any sort of relationship, illicit or not, for the moment, and Leifur really lacked the dark and dangerous qualities that had drawn her to Karl …

Kristín had been trying to call Ari Thór for two days, and his phone was always unavailable.

She had been upset at his decision to leave her so suddenly, moving to the north with little no notice, and even less discussion – the woman with whom he’d just agreed to share his life. She thought she had found the man she could love, possibly even the man with whom she would spend the rest of her life; and then he was gone, moved to Siglufjördur. She had been left alone in his flat for too long, with only books for company.

Kristín couldn’t bring herself to go with him that first weekend; a tearful farewell and the long drive back south alone would have been too much to bear.

How could he just go without a backwards glance and leave her alone?

The same thoughts returned day and night, on some sort of demented loop, and she struggled to concentrate on her textbooks. It was the first time that she had allowed herself, even felt it was possible, to be distracted. She
had
to be in love. For the very first time.

It had taken her weeks to try to understand her own feeelings, to find her direction again. It had been increasingly painful to talk to him on the phone – a heart-rending reminder of just how far away he was. She was reminded of the sweetness of his voice; reminded of the fact that she could not reach out and touch him, kiss him, feel the warmth of his arms around her.

Not long after Ari Thór left for Siglufjördur, Kristín’s father was given notice at his job and shortly thereafter her mother was also
made redundant. Every bit of stability she had was gone. More than anything, she wanted to call Ari Thór and cry down the phone. Her need for him had become greater than ever.

Then there was Christmas and he let her down again. He had
promised
to come to Reykjavík for the holiday. She had looked forward to it with childlike sincerity and joy, right up until the day he called and said he had to be on duty.

She had been speechless with disappointment, hanging up the phone after a cursory goodbye, and weeping, crying as she had not done since she was a child. Missing him had left her aching with something that hurt almost physically. She cursed her pride; her own inability to express herself, to right the situation. To be open about her love, her genuine need for him.

She bitterly regretted not calling him on Christmas Eve, but she had been so angry, with a fury and a feeling of loss that she could hardly control.

Little by little, she had regained her balance, and now was the time to set things right. She thought they had made progress, even if the calls had been few and far between. They both needed time, and Ari Thór should know that she was never one to show much emotion, and that sometimes she really was too busy to talk. But now she was taking a giant leap to try to salvage their relationship, their future. She had applied for a summer job at the hospital in Akureyri, close enough to commute to it from Siglufjördur. She had been offered the job, as well as the chance to do her final year of medical training there. She had to give her answer right away, more or less. She had tried to call Ari Thór on his mobile on Saturday, but it seemed to be turned off. So she made up her mind, took the offer, and rejected a similar offer from the National Hospital in Reykjavík; a place that had immediately been snapped up by someone else, so there was no turning back.

It was late on Saturday evening when her phone rang, a call from an unfamiliar mobile number. She answered and Ari Thór was on the line.

At last she could give him the good news.

Tómas looked over the rising mist on the fjord, it was early morning and the town was still sleeping. The days were lengthening, reminding people that summer was almost here. For a place so cold and dark in the winter, Siglufjördur was so very bright and warm in summer, generally considerably warmer than Reykjavík and the south-west.

Karl had left town for good. Despite Tómas’s best efforts, no charges would be filed against him. He expected him to continue doing harm elsewhere, but Tómas had succeeded in making at least Siglufjördur, his town, a safer place. Linda had passed away without ever regaining consciousness, so all hopes of charging Karl in relation to domestic abuse had more or less vanished.

Karl hadn’t pursued any complaints against Ari Thór, so the boy had been lucky. Tómas liked him, he was smart, and though inclined to be temperamental and impulsive, his intentions were always good, which made all the difference. Ari Thór certainly didn’t speak much about his private life, but Tómas couldn’t avoid knowing that he had split up with his girlfriend in Reykjavík. Ari Thór seemed lonely and miserable following the break-up, but Tómas hoped that the brighter days of summer might cheer him up.

Tómas was fairly sure that Hlynur, not Ari Thór, had leaked all the information to the press. Hlynur actually seemed less and less focused on his work as the weeks passed. There was something troubling that young man, but Tómas wasn’t sure what. He wasn’t certain enough to confront Hlynur about the press leaks. Also, he was in a way glad that the information about Karl had been leaked, and that
Anna and her relationship with Karl had not been. If Hlynur had been behind this, he had at least kept some sense of right and wrong.

Tómas stood still, watching the fjord and the mountains gradually coming to life as the sun rose in the sky and shone on the slopes, sparkling on the water. It was the start of a beautiful day. Tómas’s wife had decided to move to Reykjavík to study. He wasn’t going with her, not right away, at least. He wasn’t ready to leave Siglufjörður just yet.

I would like to thank the people of Siglufjördur for allowing me to use their wonderful town as the setting for this book, especially my late grandparents, Þ. Ragnar Jónasson and Guðrún Reykdal, who lived in Siglufjördur for most of their lives and would hopefully have enjoyed reading about the town in this unusual context. I would of course like to make it clear that the story is entirely fictional and none of the characters portrayed is based on any real person.

I was very lucky when Karen Sullivan and Quentin Bates conspired to bring
Snowblind
to the UK. One could not wish for a better or more hard-working publisher than Karen. Quentin has been a tireless advocate of my work in the UK, and, furthermore, it’s difficult to imagine a translator better suited to the job than him, a renowned writer of the Iceland-set Inspector Gunnhildur crime fiction series.

I would also like to thank my agents, Monica Gram at Leonhardt & Hoier in Denmark and David Headley at DHH Literary Agency in the UK, for bringing Ari Thór to an English speaking audience, as well as my Icelandic publisher, Pétur Már Ólafsson and my Icelandic editor, Bjarni Þorsteinsson, for their invaluable support in creating the Dark Iceland series.

Many others have, in one way or another, played an important part in the process of getting
Snowblind
to the UK, and I would like to mention one person in particular, my friend Bob Cornwell.

My parents, Jónas Ragnarsson and Katrín Guðjónsdóttir, also cannot be thanked enough for encouraging me to write from a
young age and for reviewing every draft of every book or story I’ve ever written or translated.

Last but not least, I want to thank my wonderful family for their endless support and understanding – my wife, María, and my daughters, Kira and Natalía.

An exclusive extract from Ragnar Jónasson’s
Nightblind,
translated by Quentin Bates and published in June 2016 by Orenda Books.

‘… In my house I’ll have no truck with either suicide or smoking.’

Repugnant.

Yes, that’s the word. There was something repugnant about that ancient, broken-down house. The walls were leaden and forbidding, especially in this blinding rain. Autumn felt more like a state of mind than a real season here. Winter had swiftly followed on the heels of summer in late September or early October and it was as if autumn had been lost somewhere on the road north. Herjólfur, Siglufjördur’s police inspector, didn’t particularly miss autumn, at least not the autumn he knew from Reykjavík, where he had been brought up. He had come to appreciate the summer in Siglufjördur, with its dazzlingly bright days. He enjoyed the winter as well, with its all-enveloping darkness that curled itself around you like a giant cat.

The house stood a little way from the entrance to the Strákar tunnel and as far as Herjólfur had been able to work out, it was years since anyone had lived in the place, set apart from the town itself by the shoreline. It looked as if it had simply been left there for nature’s heavy hands to do as it wished with the place, and her handiwork had been brutal.

Herjólfur had a special interest in this abandoned building and it was something that worried him. He was rarely fearful, having
trained himself to push uncomfortable feelings to one side, but this time he’d been unsuccessful, and he was far from happy. The patrol car was now parked by the side of the road and Herjólfur was hesitant to leave it. He shouldn’t even have been on duty, but Ari Thór, the town’s other police officer, was down with flu.

Herjólfur stood still for a moment, lashed by the bitter chill of the rain. His thoughts travelled to the warm living room at home. Moving up here had been something of a culture shock, but he and his wife had managed to make themselves comfortable, and their simple house had been gradually transformed into a home. Their daughter was at university in Reykjavík; their son had remained with his parents, living in the basement and attending college in nearby Ólafsfjördur.

He had a few days holiday coming up, assuming Ari Thór was fit to return to work. He had been planning to take his wife by surprise with a break in Reykjavík. He had booked flights from Akureyri and secured a couple of theatre tickets. This was the type of thing he tried to make a habit of, to take a rest from the day-to-day routine whenever the opportunity presented itself. Now, in the middle of the night, and while he was still on duty, he fixed his mind on the upcoming trip, as if using it as a lifeline to convince himself that everything would be fine when he entered the house.

They had been married for twenty-two years. She had become pregnant early in the relationship, and so they were married soon after. There hadn’t been any hesitation or, indeed, choice. The decision wasn’t anything to do with faith, but more with the traditions of decency to which he clung. He had been properly brought up – a stern believer in the importance of setting a good example. And they were in love, of course. He’d never have married a woman he didn’t love. Then their daughter was born and became the apple of his eye. She was in her twenties now, studying psychology, even though he had tried to convince her to go in for law. That was a path that could have brought her to work with the police, connected in some way to the world of law and order; his world.

The boy had come three years later. Now he was nineteen, a stolid and hard-working lad in his last year at college. Maybe he’d be the one to go in for law, or just apply straight to the police college.

Herjólfur had done his best to make things easier for them. He had plenty of influence in the force and he’d happily pull strings on their behalf if they decided to choose that kind of future; he was also guiltily aware that he was often inclined to push a little too hard. But he was proud of his children and it was his dearest hope that they would feel the same about him. He knew that he had worked hard, had pulled himself and his family up to a comfortable position in a tough environment. There was no forgetting that the job came with its own set of pressures.

The family had emerged from the financial crash in a bad way, with practically every penny of their savings having gone up in smoke overnight. Those were tough days, with sleepless nights, his nerves on edge and an unremitting fear that cast a shadow over everything. Now, at long last, things seemed to have started to stabilise again; he had what appeared to be a decent position in this new place, and they were comfortable, even secure. Although neither of them had mentioned it, he knew that Ari Thór had applied for the inspector’s post as well. Ari Thór had a close ally in Tómas, the former inspector at the Siglufjördur station, who had since moved to a new job in Reykjavík. Not that Herjólfur was without connections of his own, but Tómas’s heartfelt praise of and support for Ari Thór hadn’t boded well. And yet the post had gone to him and not to Ari Thór – a young man of whom Herjólfur still hadn’t quite got the measure. Ari Thór had not proved to be particularly talkative and it wasn’t easy to figure out what he was thinking. Herjólfur wasn’t sure if there was a grudge there over the way things had turned out. They hadn’t been working together for long. Ari Thór’s son had been born at the end of the previous year, on Christmas Eve, and he had gone on to take four months’ paternity leave plus a month’s holiday. They weren’t friends or even that friendly, but it was still early days.

Herjólfur’s senses sharpened, and all thoughts of his colleague
were pushed from his mind as he gradually approached the house. He had that feeling again. The feeling that something was very wrong.

If it came to it, he reckoned he could easily hold his own with one man; two would be too much for him now that age had put paid to the fitness of his earlier years. He shook his head, as if to clear away ungrounded suspicions. There was every chance the old place would be empty. He was surprised at discomfort.

There was no traffic. Few people found reason to travel to Siglufjördur at this time of year, least of all in the middle of the night and in such foul weather. The solstice was due on the weekend, and it would confirm what everyone already knew up here in the north – winter had arrived.

Herjólfur stopped in his tracks, suddenly aware of a beam of light – torchlight? – inside the old building. So there
was
someone there in the shadows, maybe more than one. Herjólfur was becoming increasingly dubious about this call-out and his nerves jangled.

Should he shout out and make himself known, or try unobtrusively to make his way up to the house and assess the situation?

He shook his head again and pulled himself together, striding forward almost angrily.
Don’t be so soft. Don’t be so damned soft!
He knew how to fight and the intruders were unlikely to be armed.

Or were they?

The dancing beam of light caught Herjólfur’s attention again and this time it shone straight into his eyes. Startled, he stopped, more frightened than he dared admit even to himself, squinting into the blinding light.

‘This is the police,’ he called out, with as much authority as he could muster, the quaver in his voice belying his false bravado. The wind swept away much of the strength he’d put into his words, but they must have been heard inside, behind those gaping window frames.

‘This is the police,’ he repeated. ‘Who’s in there?’

The light was directed at him a second time and he had an
overwhelming feeling that he needed to move, to find some kind of refuge. But he hesitated, all the time aware that he was acting against his own instincts. A police officer is the one with authority, he reminded himself. He shouldn’t let himself be rattled, feel the need to hide.

He took a step forward, closer to the house, his footsteps cautious.

That was when he heard the shot, deafening and violent.