The Silence of the Sea (22 page)

‘Shouldn’t we simply chance it? Start sailing and see what happens?’ Ægir was desperate to prevent the captain from saying the words he dreaded most; that they should launch a dinghy and try to take a closer look. The deck felt as secure as a padded cell compared to the thought of braving the ferocious sea in a flimsy little tender. He was suddenly aware of the seasickness pill lodged in his throat, refusing to slide down into his stomach.

Thráinn shook his head without speaking. Halli vacillated at his side, then spoke up when it appeared that the captain was not going to. ‘I reckon we’ve done what we can from up here. The weather won’t make any difference.’ He tapped his pole lightly on the rail. ‘Why don’t we go inside since this obviously isn’t going to achieve anything? I’ll check the engine room and the bottom deck. If everything’s okay down there, maybe it wouldn’t be such a crazy idea to get going again.’

Ægir was facing into the wind, which made it difficult to see the men’s faces. The gale seemed to be growing stronger and the drops that lashed his face were halfway between rain and hail. Turning away from the weather, he saw one of his daughters watching him through a porthole. The glass was covered with spray so he couldn’t see which of the twins it was; Arna, or Bylgja without her glasses. The little face looked somehow different, more dejected than a child’s face should, unless it was a distortion caused by the streams of water coursing down the glass. He hoped her father’s performance on deck was not the cause of her misery. His heart grew heavy and the bravado that had been fuelling him until now evaporated. ‘I’m all for going inside.’ His voice betrayed neither agitation nor eagerness; he was simply stating a fact. The wind snatched the hood from his head and water trickled down his neck, forming an icy river down his spine. The cold triggered a mental image of the thin hand in the freezer and suddenly he could do no more. ‘I’m completely knackered.’

His words seemed to galvanise Thráinn, though it was possible he had been intending to call it a day anyway. They unclipped the lifelines and stowed the equipment and poles in the box without speaking, too exhausted to yell above the noise of the wind. When they entered the storeroom where the waterproofs were kept, Halli was the first to break the silence. It was as quiet as a church inside after the roaring of the storm. ‘I reckon my waterproofs are even wetter on the inside.’ He wrestled with the trousers, which clung obstinately to the legs of his jeans. ‘Don’t know why I bothered putting them on.’

‘This stuff’s crap. Useless in these conditions.’ Thráinn beat most of the water from his jacket and hung it up. ‘We’d have been better off wearing this thing.’ He yanked at the leg of a wetsuit hanging from one of the pegs. An oxygen cylinder, mask and buoyancy compensator were stowed underneath. ‘Then you wouldn’t have needed the lifeline either.’

‘No, thanks.’ Halli grimaced. ‘No one’ll ever talk me into diving. It’s unnatural to breathe underwater.’

‘Me either.’ Thráinn’s voice sounded as worn and hoarse as it had at the breakfast table. ‘I’ve never understood the attraction.’

Ægir stopped rubbing at the wet patches on his sleeves. At last here was a chance to prove himself braver than these men. ‘I can dive. I even have a certificate.’ He omitted to point out that it was a certificate for beginners, which had involved little more than learning how to expel water from one’s mask.

‘You can dive?’ Thráinn eyed him with an expression he didn’t much like, as if the captain was investing his words with a deeper meaning than he would wish. Halli also stood and gawped at him for a moment, then caught the captain’s eye.

‘Er, yes.’ Ægir hesitated. Didn’t they believe him? Was he so pathetic in their estimation that they believed he was capable of making up a lie like that to impress them? ‘I went on a course a few years ago while on holiday abroad.’

‘Then isn’t it time you gave it another go?’ Thráinn poked the oxygen cylinder with his toe; it didn’t budge. ‘There’s no point trying to see what’s happening from up on deck but it would be child’s play for a diver. How about it? It should only take a few minutes.’

Once again Ægir was conscious of the pill burning his dry throat. What kind of moron was he? He had absolutely no desire to plunge into that angry, grey sea, which had nothing in common with the warm turquoise waters where he had learnt to dive. Here he would be enfolded in an icy grip about as comforting as the embrace of the body in the freezer. He gulped and the pill shifted infinitesimally further down his throat. He was transported back to the time he had lied to some boys he used to look up to as a kid, by claiming that he could jump between two garage roofs. They had taken him at his word. He had climbed up onto the neighbour’s garage and tried to leap over to the next one, about ten metres away, as he claimed to have done often, aware all the time that he would never make it. He had spent the rest of the summer stuck at home with a broken leg. Had he learnt nothing since then?

Ægir’s thoughts returned to that summer as Halli and Thráinn lowered him into the sea. If the worst happened, broken bones would be the least of his problems. His only comfort was the knowledge that he was attached to the rail, so he could be hauled up in case of emergency; a fact he kept repeating to himself in the hope that it would help him master his terror. There had been no lifeline when he leapt off that garage years before. But this consoling thought evaporated the instant his feet dipped into the pitiless sea and the cold began to tighten its iron grip on him. It was no better when his whole body was submerged. His teeth chattered uncontrollably, preventing him from yelling with all the breath in his lungs that he wanted out. He was here now and would simply have to complete his task: even as he told himself it should only take about five minutes, he knew he was lying. Checking the pressure gauge, he saw that there was still enough air in the tank, which was hardly surprising as he had barely had time to use any. Why couldn’t the cylinder have been empty? Then no one could have expected him to do this.

He deflated his buoyancy compensator, the BCD, a little and began to sink. Such was the shock of the cold when the surface closed over his skull that he felt as if he’d been hit over the head with a plank. Everything went silent and he realised he was holding his breath, so he concentrated on his respiration for a while. In. Out. In. Out. After a minute or two he was breathing instinctively, which was a relief. Yet it was as much as he could do right now, with the murky grey waves heaving just above his head, to focus on not panicking. He tried to calm himself, this time by closing his eyes and listening to his own breathing magnified by the mask. Feeling slightly better, he resolved to get on with the job, but even as he moved, warning bells began to go off in the most primitive part of his brain.

This would end badly.

This would end badly.

This was bound to end badly.

He opened his eyes.

‘I want eight
eyeses
.’ Orri did not explain his choice of number. Perhaps it was the highest he knew.

‘What do you want with eight eyes, darling?’ Thóra parked in the only free space in front of the nursery school. ‘Isn’t two enough?’

‘I want to see lots and lots.’ Orri gazed out of the window, his face thoughtful. The view outside offered little to engage the interest of a four-year-old, even if he had quadruple the number of eyes; only some spindly poplars, not yet in bud.

‘I’m not sure you’d see any more with eight eyes than you do with two.’ Thóra got out and opened the door for the little boy. ‘And I bet it would be much harder to get to sleep at night if you had to close all those eyes.’

‘I want eight
eyeses
anyway.’

Thóra unfastened his seatbelt and moved aside so that he could climb out. ‘There isn’t any room for them, darling. Your face isn’t big enough.’

‘Spiders are small but they’ve got eight
eyeses
.’

That explained it. ‘Spiders have eight legs, not eight eyes.’ The wind shook the poplars, rattling a few dry leaves left over from summer. As she led Orri to the entrance they were met by a crescendo of noise created by dozens of parents tugging anoraks off whimpering children, mingled with the shrieks of those who were already playing inside. When Thóra opened the door, she felt like following Orri’s example and putting her hands over her ears. Stooping down to him, she freed one hand and whispered: ‘It’s a good thing you haven’t got eight ears, sweetheart, or you’d need eight hands.’

As she got back behind the wheel and slammed the car door, she experienced a familiar pang of guilt. Was the child really all right in the care of non-family members? It wasn’t that she suspected the staff were anything but kind – quite the contrary. It was the sheer number of children that worried her; at home there were five of them to see to Orri’s needs but at nursery school the ratio was almost reversed. Still, it couldn’t be helped. She should be grateful for all the time she got to spend with her grandson, unlike many grandmothers. For the moment, at least. Gylfi was still obsessed with the terrible oil rig idea and it was becoming infectious. Only this morning she had heard Sóley asking her brother whether summer jobs were better paid in Norway. And considering how keen Matthew was on the idea, it wouldn’t surprise her if he sent in an application next.

‘Any more news about the body?’ Thóra hung up her jacket, trying to mask her surprise that Bella should not only have arrived punctually but already be seated at her computer in reception.

‘No idea.’ Bella didn’t raise her eyes from the screen. The bluish glow illuminated her broad, chalk-white face, rendering her pallor more corpse-like than ever. ‘But there’s no point wasting any more time thinking about it. I’ve already told you – it’s Karítas.’

‘Well, perhaps.’ Thóra closed the cupboard and picked up her briefcase. She hadn’t told Bella what the police had disclosed about the possibility that a dead woman had been found on board. She didn’t quite trust her, though as far as she was aware the secretary had never leaked any information. In any case, the details were as yet unconfirmed, so there was no need to give Bella further grounds for believing that Karítas was dead. ‘Why are you here so early?’ Perhaps the secretary was so gripped by the case that she felt compelled to come to work before the day’s regular business began.

‘I owe money on my home Internet account.’ Bella flung Thóra a scornful look. No doubt it was meant to convey that they didn’t pay her a wage fit for a human being. But to earn that, of course, one would have to do some actual work. ‘I’ve put in a bid on eBay that I want to keep an eye on. The time’s nearly up and I don’t want anyone jumping in at the last minute and outbidding me.’

Thóra paused and turned. ‘You say you can’t afford to pay for the Internet, yet you’re always shopping on-line. If I were you I’d concentrate on paying off those little debts first.’

Bella rolled her eyes. ‘They’re not “little”.’ She fiddled with the mouse and puffed out her cheeks. ‘Look, I’m doing deals, okay? If I buy this box for the right price I can sell it on afterwards for a profit. So I’m making money, not spending it.’

‘Box?’ Thóra was puzzled. ‘What kind of box can you buy and sell for a profit?’

‘Batman Lego. Arkham Asylum.’

Thóra didn’t trust herself to repeat this. ‘How can it be an investment to buy boxes of Lego?’ Perhaps Bella had finally gone round the bend, but, then again, it was probably no worse than putting one’s money in Icelandic shares if the experience of the last few years was anything to go by. ‘Is it a collector’s item?’

Bella nodded. ‘Yes, and this bloke obviously has no idea what he’s got his hands on.’ She grinned and squinted at the eBay screen. ‘The packaging is intact, all the booklets are included and there isn’t a single piece missing. There were seven figures in the box.’

Thóra gave a tentative smile, unsure whether seven represented an unusually large or small number. ‘Good luck.’ She decided this brief insight into Bella’s world was quite enough to be going on with and went into her office. If she had found a box of Lego at home she would doubtless have handed it to Orri, probably even helped him tear open the packaging. Unable to resist the temptation, she pulled up eBay to see what all the fuss was about. When she finally managed to track down the precious box it turned out to be a real anti-climax. It consisted of a small Lego figure in a Batman costume, a selection of his enemies, and some bricks for building a house or prison. An investment was not the first thing that sprang to mind. Noticing that the auction was due to close in half an hour, she felt tempted to outbid Bella by a fraction, just for the hell of it, but didn’t have the heart. Instead, she knuckled down to work.

After spending half an hour studying the laws relating to life insurance and missing persons, and reading the Reykjavík District Court’s verdict in the case of the Icelander who had vanished from a sailing vessel, she was still unsure what to advise Ægir’s parents about how long the process might take. All she could say with confidence was that it would take time and, if no new evidence emerged, the case would probably be delayed by the court. The one encouraging sign was that the life cover had eventually been paid out in the case of the missing Icelander. If she presented sufficiently careful arguments, the same result could probably be achieved for Ægir and Lára. She rang the police to chase up the documents she’d requested and to her delight was informed that after lunch she could pick up all the papers they were currently prepared to release. However, they warned her to ring ahead to avoid a wasted journey as they were rushed off their feet and unsure when they would have time to make the copies. Before hanging up, she asked if there was any new information about the person who had been washed up on shore but was told again that they were not prepared to release a statement as yet. Well, all would be revealed eventually and in the meantime she could occupy herself by working on the letter and report for the insurance company.

The document soon filled up with a feeble attempt to explain a set of circumstances so implausible that there was a risk her letter would be dismissed as a bad joke. After wrestling for ages with a recalcitrant sentence, Thóra gave up, stood and stretched. It troubled her that she didn’t know why Ægir and Lára had insured their lives for such a vast sum. Ægir’s stepping into the breach to replace the injured crew member also struck her as highly irregular. When she had spoken to his manager on the phone, it turned out that the man had a vague memory of agreeing to the suggestion in order to cut costs, but when she pressed him for a concrete figure that she could quote in her report, he hesitated. In point of fact, the saving had been negligible; the cost of around a week’s wages for one foreign sailor, possibly with a bonus, and a flight ticket home. Ægir’s boss admitted that this was an insignificant amount in the context, and therefore an unnecessary economy. He concluded by saying what she did not want to hear; that it had been Ægir’s personal decision to make up the shortfall as he had been very keen to make the voyage. In other words, it had been his idea.