Strange Shores (7 page)

‘Oh.’

The boy shuffled past him and sauntered off down the street back to school, a gawky figure, his trousers worn deliberately low to reveal his boxer shorts. ‘What is the world coming to?’ Erlendur thought, watching the boy until he vanished round a corner.

He resumed his task of removing papers and pamphlets from the trunk, and finally came across a sheaf of letters which he stopped to read. Some were from Ingunn’s sisters, others from her mother or friends. Matthildur had last written to her sister about three months before she went missing. She reported the local news and described the weather in some detail: it had been unsettled that autumn and now winter was just round the corner. But she was looking forward to Christmas and was busy making herself a dress for the festive season. The earlier letters also stuck to generalities, giving no hint of her relationship with her husband. Erlendur knew he should not necessarily attach any significance to this. People didn’t always commit their private thoughts to paper.

I went to a dance with Ninna
, she had written in a letter dated two years before her disappearance,
and we had a smashing time. The band was local and played a mix of new tunes and old favourites. Ninna and I danced till we dropped. To begin with, the boys were really shy about asking us up. Jakob – the one you used to know – was there and we had a long talk after the dance. He’s living in Eskifjördur these days.

Having gone through the whole trunk without becoming any better acquainted with either Jakob or Matthildur, Erlendur began to replace the contents, trying to put them back in the same order. It occurred to him that it might be worth looking at the newspapers, so he started turning the pages. He couldn’t imagine why Matthildur’s sister should have kept so many copies of this particular rag, the mouthpiece of the Progressive Party. Reports of heated political squabbles and resolutions passed by the Farmers’ Association were interspersed with news items about the lambing and hay harvest. But one issue contained a story about the disaster that had befallen the British soldiers, as well as a small piece on Matthildur’s disappearance the same night.

In another issue he found an obituary of Jakob. As far as Erlendur could gather the writer, one Pétur Alfredsson, had been a friend. The article traced Jakob’s family to Hornafjördur in the east and to Reykjavík, where he had been born. After the customary enumeration of his virtues, it was stated that Jakob had lost his young wife in a tragic accident, after which he never remarried. Finally, there was a brief description of how he had drowned in a storm while returning from a fishing trip and how his body and that of his companion had been pulled from the sea and, prior to their funerals, stored in the old ice house in Eskifjördur.

But it was not the contents of the obituary that attracted Erlendur’s attention so much as the word, still perfectly legible, that had been scrawled across it in thick black pencil:

BASTARD.

AS BEFORE, HRUND
was sitting at her window, gazing over to where the pylons would soon be rising. The glare from the floodlit building site brightened the sky behind the house but the smelter itself was hidden from view. She saw Erlendur arrive in his car and this time when he knocked, she rose from her chair, opened the door and invited him in. He followed her into the sitting room where she resumed her customary post.

‘The evenings are so lovely at this time of year,’ she said.

‘They certainly are,’ Erlendur agreed, taking a seat. There were no lights on. Hrund had been sitting in semi-darkness, wrapped in a blanket. The street lamps cast her shadow on the wall behind her and Erlendur found himself watching her silhouette in fascination. Hrund seemed uninterested in the reason for his visit, as if taking it for granted that they should be sitting there, two strangers, in companionable silence.

‘I went over to Egilsstadir today,’ Erlendur said eventually.

‘Oh?’ said Hrund. ‘Do you want to tell me about it? You’re welcome to help yourself to coffee, by the way. There’s some in the pot, and you’ll find a cup in the cupboard above the sink.’

Erlendur went into the kitchen. When he came back, Hrund had turned away from the window and was waiting expectantly.

‘I suppose you’re still after information about Matthildur.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Then you must have been to see my nephew. Did you go to the home?’

Erlendur nodded.

‘I’ve never really known him well. It just worked out that way.’

‘That’s common enough,’ said Erlendur, thinking about his own family. ‘He’s on good form. Well, having said that, he’s lost the sight in one eye. He let me have a poke around in a trunk that belonged to your sister Ingunn, and I found some old letters and stuff like that.’

‘Were they useful?’

‘No, not really.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have any letters from Matthildur, if that’s what you’re after.’

‘No, you told me. Actually, I was wondering if any of Matthildur’s belongings, her personal effects, were still around. Or if you had a photograph.’

‘I don’t know about any of her things, but I do have a picture of us sisters, if only I knew where to lay my hands on it.’ Hrund rose and went into her bedroom. Erlendur felt guilty about putting her to this trouble, but consoled himself with the thought that she was lonely and that a bit of company, however unexciting, would probably do her good.

Hrund returned carrying two shoeboxes, sat down in her chair and started to sift through them.

‘It’s not in an album,’ she said. ‘I’ve never bothered to sort these pictures out properly. My husband’s dead – did I tell you that?’

‘No,’ said Erlendur. Bóas had informed him that Hrund was a widow with two sons who had gone away to study in Reykjavík and stayed there, only coming home for visits.

‘There are photos of him here that I’d forgotten all about. And here’s one of us four sisters during the haymaking.’

She handed Erlendur a curling, black-and-white picture with a yellowing back, stained with what might have been coffee. The four sisters were standing in a meadow, holding rakes. It was a brilliant summer’s day and they stood there beaming at the camera, all wearing dresses, and two of them headscarves, lined up in a row for the photographer. There was no mistaking their happiness, even so many years on.

‘Our mother took the picture,’ said Hrund. ‘The camera belonged to her second husband, Thorbjörn. That’s me on the far left, the baby of the family – the afterthought. Then that’s Ingunn, with the headscarf, and Matthildur beside her and then Jóa – poor old Jóhanna.’

Their faces were not particularly clear but Erlendur could make out Matthildur’s features: deep-set eyes and a determined expression. He looked for a date but couldn’t see one.

‘I think it was taken about eight years before she went missing,’ said Hrund, as if reading his mind. ‘During the Depression.’

‘Ingunn and Jóhanna moved to Reykjavík, didn’t they? Did they go at the same time?’

‘No, Jóhanna went first, then Ingunn followed. Shortly after the picture was taken, in fact. Everything changed so quickly. One minute we were all living at home, having a whale of a time. Next thing you know, we’d scattered to the four winds. It all seemed to happen at once and nothing was ever the same again.’

‘Do you remember a friend of Matthildur’s, known as Ninna?’ Erlendur asked.

‘Yes, I do. A sweet girl. I believe she’s still alive. You should check. Ninna’s her real name – not a nickname.’

‘Has she lived in the East Fjords all this time?’

‘Yes. She and Matthildur were great friends – childhood friends.’

‘Maybe I’ll look her up,’ said Erlendur, rising to his feet. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to keep you up all night.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Hrund. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I just don’t understand why someone who didn’t know the family should be so interested in Matthildur. Are you writing a book?’

‘No,’ Erlendur said, smiling. ‘There’ll be no book. By the way, did Ingunn and Jakob know each other before he got together with Matthildur?’

‘Ingunn and Jakob? Why do you ask?’

Erlendur wondered if he should tell her about the letter from Matthildur that he had found in Ingunn’s trunk, and the word ‘bastard’ scrawled across Jakob’s obituary. There was no telling whether Ingunn had written the word herself. The paper may not even have been hers: someone could have sent it to her.

‘Just a thought,’ he said. ‘Good-looking girls like you must have had dozens of admirers.’

‘What have you found out?’ asked Hrund, brushing aside Erlendur’s attempt at flattery.

‘Nothing,’ he said hastily, sensing an abrupt change in her mood.

‘You’re not . . . spying on our family, are you?’ she asked.

The conversation was taking a disastrous turn but Erlendur could think of no way of rescuing the situation. After a bad night’s sleep and a long drive he was not at his sharpest.

‘No, of course not,’ he assured her, realising how unconvincing he sounded.

‘Well, let me tell you that I’m far from happy with your prying. Far from happy. I don’t like the way you come here and start interrogating members of my family like a . . . like a policeman. I won’t have it!’

‘No, of course not,’ Erlendur repeated. ‘I’m very sorry if I’ve offended you in some way –’

‘What are you up to?’ Hrund asked, thoroughly riled by now. ‘What are you trying to dig up? What’s all this got to do with people going missing?’

‘Nothing,’ Erlendur said. ‘Really. You said yourself that rumours had been going around about Jakob – that people used to claim Matthildur haunted him.’

‘I told you that was just gossip. Surely you’re not taking it seriously? Gossip from half a century ago?’

‘No, but –’

‘And I don’t believe in ghosts.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘I think perhaps you should leave.’

Erlendur said a hasty goodbye and went out to his car without looking round, aware of her presence at the window, her eyes boring into his back.

He parked by the aluminium smelter to watch all the activity. The construction of the huge sheds for the reduction pots was well advanced, a crowd of labourers swarming over the site, day and night, racing to finish on time. Floodlights lent the surroundings an unearthly appearance in the dusk. All this relentless progress was such a striking contrast to the tranquillity of the narrow fjord and the snow-capped mountains reflected in its mirror-like surface.

AGAIN HE IS
overwhelmed by the odd feeling that he is lying on the floor of the derelict farm, haunted by an unseen presence. He must be hallucinating. He knows he is no longer at the old house. He must have left, or he wouldn’t be able to see the stars in the night sky.

But perhaps that is part of the hallucination.

He turns his head to where the door should be but sees nothing but inky blackness. Reaching out his arm, he touches the rough, damp render of the wall. He has a torch somewhere. He gropes for it and switches it on. The beam is weak: it casts a feeble glow over the surroundings – the empty doorway to the hall, the broken windows through which the cold air is streaming, the ceiling that has collapsed here and there. He has a powerful sense of a presence but can see no one.

‘Who’s there?’ he calls. There is no answer.

Rising to his feet, he picks his way across the room by the beam of the torch. He can see no sign of the traveller he remembers standing in the doorway, then later lighting a fire on the floor and talking to him as if they were acquainted. The vision has gone, yet he has the bizarre impression that the event has yet to happen.

He has made up a bed for himself in the sitting room where the couch was in the old days. It consists of a thin mat, two blankets to cover his sleeping bag and a rucksack for a pillow. Next to it are his scuffed hiking boots and a bin bag containing a few scraps of food. He has made an effort to keep the place tidy, helped by the fact that he doesn’t have much luggage. The house may be nothing but a bleak ruin, open to the wind and weather, but he moves around the room with the respect for the home that was instilled in him as a child.

‘Is anybody there?’ he asks in a low voice.

His only answer is the moaning of the wind, accompanied by the squeak of a door still hanging stubbornly from its hinges, and the creaking of two sheets of corrugated iron which cling with extraordinary tenacity to the roof. He steps into the hall and shines his torch outside into the yard before entering the kitchen. As the beam gradually fades, the night closes in around him. The faint circle of light flickers over the bare shelves. The table used to stand under the window facing the byre and barn, and beyond them the moor and mountains. Every new day would begin at that table and end there in the evening.

‘Is anybody there?’ he repeats in a whisper.

He continues his search, out of the kitchen and down the short passage to the bedrooms. He can’t get into his parents’ room because the roof has fallen in over the door and part of the passage. There his father had sat after his descent from the moors, inconsolable, aware that his two sons were still out there; sure that they were lost. He had known better than anyone what conditions up there were like and his collapse had been total. There were ugly patches of frostbite on his face as he sat there while the rescue party gathered in the kitchen.

‘Is anybody there?’ he whispers a third time. The torch beam fades still further and begins to gutter. He bangs it on his palm and the light grows momentarily brighter. The battery is almost dead. He proceeds to the room he once shared with his brother and illuminates the place where their beds used to stand, separated by a night table. There was a small wardrobe in the corner and a thick rug to protect their toes from the icy floor. Now the room contains nothing but darkness.

The realisation finally hits him that there is no one else in the house. The presence he felt was merely an illusion. There is no one left but him. He turns and makes his way back past the kitchen and hall to the sitting room, where the torch conks out. When he thumps it again it sheds a weak light on the wall opposite. The shadow of a man plays over the rough surface and for an instant he sees a figure with back turned and head bowed, as if in defeat. The vision startles him so much that he drops the torch and it goes out again.