Why Did You Lie? (33 page)

‘I suppose so.’ There was nothing more to say. Aldís’s assessment of the situation was only too plausible. ‘But maybe I could talk to you later in the week. Send you an e-mail or ring you if I don’t run into you.’

‘Sure. E-mail me. That’d be best.’ It didn’t surprise Nína that Aldís should choose a private method of communication over a conversation in the middle of the corridor for all the world to hear. Aldís went back into the room, leaving Nína behind on her own. She longed to keep talking but checked the urge to follow Aldís. If the woman was going to be given a major role in this investigation, Nína felt annoyed with herself for not having pressed Thröstur’s case harder.

She went back to her office. Pity it was still too early to make any phone calls. It had occurred to her that Lárus’s widow might be able to shed light on her husband’s connection with Thröstur. There must have been one, given that Thröstur had noted down his name. Perhaps he had been abused in his youth and Thröstur had interviewed him about it. Larús might have been the main subject of yet another series of articles about historical sex abuse cases. For all she knew, raking the whole thing up might have thrown his mind into such turmoil that he had felt unable to go on living. But that didn’t explain why Thröstur had resorted to the same way out. And done so first.

Nína sat down in front of her computer but instead of poring over the report on Lárus’s suicide she decided to examine what had been entered into the database about the Skerjafjördur case. She looked up the husband Nói’s address in the phonebook. He turned out to be the only person with that name in Skerjafjördur, which would make it easy to find the evening shift’s report on the server. But it was unlikely that Aldís and co. would have finished their incident reports for the night yet, so Nína would have to be patient.

She checked the earlier report and hadn’t read far when she came across the name of Nói’s wife. Nína leant back slightly from the computer. Vala Konrádsdóttir. The woman the police thought had something to hide.

Chapter 28

26 January 2014

The light was on over the kitchen table. Apart from that the house lay in darkness. The open doorways leading to the sitting room and hall yawned black and silent, and an air of lonely melancholy lay over everything. As Nói contemplated the dimly lit kitchen, for the first time he saw through the illusion he had created. The perfect family life that he had dreamt of and taken such immeasurable pains to construct was really as flawed as everything else in this world.

It was rather late to come to this realisation now that their life was lying in tatters.

There would be no chance to start afresh and undo the past: take the pressure off Vala and Tumi, cease the perpetual nagging that they had complained about so bitterly over the years. He had always known that a shiny fitted kitchen and soft leather sofas weren’t everything, so he had stressed the importance of cultivating family life. Felt that he had achieved the only things that really mattered: that Tumi and Vala should be perfectly happy and healthy; that Tumi’s childhood should be different from his own upbringing; that his son would never have to be ashamed of their house or hesitate to invite friends home for fear that his parents would be drunk and embarrassing; that his clothes wouldn’t be full of holes and he would never have to resort to pulling things out of the dirty laundry basket to find something to wear; that he would never have to lie about the gifts he had received in his shoe in the run-up to Christmas because it had always been empty in the morning. His son deserved a perfect existence on which nothing cast a shadow.

Therein lay the problem. Nói had aimed too high. He had never known what was normal or realistic, had failed to grasp that it was possible to go too far the other way. Nobody lived a perfect life; by refusing to adjust his expectations he had ended up even further from his goal. Although he meant well, he had forced his family to act out some sort of utopian fantasy. Tumi and Vala – but especially Vala – had chosen to hide from him anything that didn’t fit in with his vision.

On the kitchen table lay the notes Vala had concealed from him. He was still ignorant of their origin and purpose, and endlessly poring over them was futile. All he had gained by this was to sense the anger of the person who had written them. He couldn’t exactly read between the lines, since each note consisted of only one line. No, the thoughts that had flown through Nói’s mind had been of Vala. Why hadn’t she confided in him? Why had she hidden the vile threats, which, it was now clear, were far from empty?

Of course she couldn’t have known at first how serious this was, but why hadn’t she shown him the letters, shaken her head over them, laughed them off as nonsense? It was impossible to tell what order the threats had arrived in, so he was in no position to decide what a normal reaction would have been in the beginning. They were undated and although every note showed signs of having been folded to fit in an envelope, they could just as well have been delivered by hand, pushed through the letterbox like the one yesterday evening. There were no envelopes in the box where Vala had hidden them.

No, there must be more to it than these sinister notes. It didn’t make sense otherwise. How would she have known the threats were meant for her? Surely, they could just as well have been for him? Or Tumi? If he had found a letter like this in the post he would immediately have assumed it was something to do with their son; that it was teenagers fooling around. If he had received letters like this and had no idea why, it would never have occurred to him to conceal the fact from Vala and hide them in a box of old trainers. Vala must instantly have connected them with some event from her past that she was unwilling to reveal to her family. To him. Something to do with a lie she must have told, if there was any truth in the repeated references to lies or liars. But who had she lied to and what had she lied about?

Nói rubbed his dry eyes, which only made them feel worse. So many questions but no answers. Why hadn’t Vala simply thrown the letters away? Was she expecting to have to bring them out later if the situation turned out to be serious? Probably. But
probably
wasn’t a good enough answer.

Nói didn’t want to face up to the hardest question of all: was Vala mixed up in something so bad that it wouldn’t merely shake the foundations of their marriage but destroy it completely? He could only think of two alternatives. One was that she had cheated on him and the letters were from her lover’s wife. The other was that she had been involved in something illegal and the victim was out for revenge. The first theory seemed far more plausible. He simply couldn’t imagine Vala committing a crime. The idea was absurd. Yet he couldn’t entirely dismiss it: after all, what seemed absurd sometimes turned out to be the bitter truth.

And which was worse, when it came down to it?

That she had cheated on him or broken the law?

Cheating, he thought. That affected him personally. Breaking the law affected others. But like every aspect of this miserable bloody business, the choice wasn’t that simple. How would he like to visit Vala in prison? Would he allow Tumi to go? Would that be easier for their son than if they divorced because Vala had been unfaithful? In that eventuality, which of them would Tumi live with? Which of them would stay on in the house? However hard Nói wrestled with the problem, the answer eluded his grasp. On second thoughts, it might be easiest for everyone if Vala went to prison, however implausible the idea. If only he knew what was behind all this.

He would have his answers when Vala woke up tomorrow morning, so there was no point losing his mind just yet. He had stopped himself from asking her any questions when he found her in the utility room, just dosed her with painkillers and helped her back to bed. He had given her some sheets of paper and a pen and told her to write it down if there was anything she needed. He could fetch water, a blanket, whatever she wanted.

She had taken them and turned away, avoiding his eye. Nói thought it best to leave her in peace. She could do with some rest if she was going to be fit enough to provide him with an explanation tomorrow morning. He didn’t care if it took the whole of Sunday, from sunrise to the following night, to drag the truth out of her.

Vala would be up in a few hours, but even so he couldn’t stop brooding.

He ceased rubbing his sore eyes and blinked a few times in the hope that they would recover. They didn’t. Instead, it felt as if he had dislodged grit from his lashes and forced it under his lids. Every time he blinked it hurt. He got up to fetch some eye drops and noticed that his neighbours’ kitchen light was on. Clearly he wasn’t the only one with insomnia.

Forgetting the eye drops, Nói went over to the window. He was curious to know which of them was up and about. Not that it mattered but at least it would be a distraction from his worries. No movement was visible in the brightly lit kitchen windows. It used to irritate him when he was loading the dishwasher after supper that he risked glancing up to see the couple opposite doing exactly the same thing at exactly the same time. Whenever it happened, it was hard to tell who was more embarrassed, him or his neighbours. Sometimes they exchanged waves, at other times they pretended not to notice one another.

Now, unable to see either of them, Nói concluded they had forgotten to switch the lights off. He was turning away from the window when he caught sight of a movement in the garden behind the neighbours’ house. He strained his eyes but could hardly see a thing in the darkness, let alone tell who or what was there. Nói felt his tiredness receding as the adrenalin began to pump through his veins. Part of him hoped it was the perpetrator prowling around out there. If so he would reduce him to the same state Vala was in. It would be infinitely sweeter than any justice administered by the courts. If the driver was found, it would take years for the case to pass through the system, no doubt deliberately to ensure that all the wind had left the victim’s sails by the time the suspended sentence was finally passed. No, thanks. An eye for a fucking eye and a tooth for a fucking tooth. He may have buggered up many aspects of their family life over the years but no one would be able to say that he had sat idly by while his wife suffered an injustice.

He was surprised at how easily he slid into the role of primitive man of violence who longed to redden his hands with another’s blood. He certainly had enough pent-up rage. Well, here was his chance. He shoved his feet in his clogs as fast as he could and dashed outside onto the decking.

His primitive instincts were immediately checked by the cold. Gooseflesh reminded him how inadequately he was dressed and how ill equipped he was for any kind of struggle if it came to blows. If this was the man who had knocked Vala down he was almost certainly armed with a blunt instrument, a knife or worse. Nói was empty-handed. He wondered if he should go back inside, fetch his jacket and something to defend himself with, then realised that it was the woman from next door who was standing there, gazing out to sea. She was clutching a thick towelling dressing gown around her and had on a large pair of boots. The wind whirled her hair, making her look half crazed. Nói turned back to close the door, noticing too late that Púki had slipped out. His pawprints led away across the snow. Damn. Nói walked over to the boundary between their properties and called out in a low voice: ‘Hi, Bylgja. Is anything wrong?’ Perhaps she had seen a man lurking out here. If so, he would urge her to go straight back inside.

The woman turned to Nói, apparently unsurprised at encountering someone in the garden in the middle of the night. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

‘Same here.’ Nói hugged himself in a losing battle against the cold. It was hard to stop his teeth chattering. ‘I thought I saw a movement and wanted to check what was going on, but I expect it was you.’

The woman glanced around as if she had only just realised where she was. ‘I didn’t see anything.’

‘Good. I’m a bit twitchy at the moment. All the bulbs in our outside lights have been smashed twice and I thought I might finally get my hands on the vandal.’

‘Well, it wasn’t me.’

Nói smiled and his teeth ached with the cold. ‘No. I realise that.’

The woman turned back to the sea, staring as if she was expecting something to rise up out of the choppy, black expanse. ‘It’s so strange. I’ve been waking up every night with a powerful urge to go and watch the sea. I’ve never experienced anything like it before, though we’ve lived here nearly fifteen years. I’d understand if we’d only just moved in.’ She pulled a strand of hair out of the corner of her mouth. ‘It’s a very odd feeling.’

Nói turned to the sea too, as if he expected to find the explanation there. ‘I’ve caught myself standing staring at it several times too. When they’re searching for people who’ve walked into the sea to commit suicide, I can’t stop myself – I keep expecting to see their bodies floating out there.’

She looked at him, smiling sleepily. ‘I know what you mean. Now you come to mention it, the feeling’s not dissimilar. Perhaps, without realising it, I’ve heard there’s a search under way. It’s probably my subconscious at work.’ She gazed out to sea again and Nói followed her example. Somehow, though he was still freezing, the cold no longer bothered him.

‘I told the police about your satnav.’ Nói didn’t know why he had brought this up now. It wasn’t as if they were standing awkwardly at a party, trying to make small talk. He ought to hurry back inside.

‘Oh. I’ve given up worrying about it. I wrote it off after Steini noticed it was missing and spent the whole evening going on and on about it. Do you think it’ll ever turn up?’ A small laugh escaped her. ‘Not that I care. But it would serve Steini right because, if I know him, he’ll be planning to give me a new one for my birthday next month. It would serve him right if ours was found and it ruined his idea. I’ve had it up to here with his moaning.’

Clearly Nói wasn’t the only husband who liked to nag. But he didn’t laugh; he wasn’t particularly keen to end up like Steini. If he didn’t get a grip on himself he would end up a grumpy old git like him in ten years’ time. ‘I wouldn’t get your hopes up. I’ll be interested to see if they find the couple, let alone the satnav.’ Or the keys to the chalet. ‘When the police came round they mentioned that someone had reported hearing a shot down here one night while we were away. That wasn’t you, was it?’