The Fallout Read online

  About the Author

  Yrsa Sigurdardóttir works as a civil engineer in Reykjavík. She made her crime fiction debut in 2005 with Last Rituals, the first instalment in the Thóra Gudmundsdóttir series, and has been translated into more than thirty languages. The Silence of the Sea won the Petrona Award in 2015. The Fallout is her fifteenth adult novel and the sixth in the Freyja and Huldar Series.

  About the Translator

  Victoria Cribb studied and worked in Iceland for many years. She has translated some forty books by Icelandic authors including Arnaldur Indridason, Ragnar Jónasson and Sjón. In 2017 she received the Ordstír honorary translation award for her services to Icelandic literature.

  Also by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

  The Thóra ­Gudmundsdóttir novels

  Last Rituals

  My Soul to Take

  Ashes to Dust

  The Day is Dark

  Someone to Watch Over Me

  The Silence of the Sea

  Standalones

  I Remember You

  The Undesired

  Why Did You Lie?

  The Freyja and ­Huldar Series

  The Legacy

  The Reckoning

  The Absolution

  Gallows Rock

  The Doll

  The Fallout

  The Fallout

  Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

  Translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb

  www.hodder.co.uk

  First published with the title Þögn in 2019 by Veröld Publishing, Reykjavík

  First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK company

  Copyright © Yrsa Sigurdardóttir 2022

  English translation copyright © Victoria Cribb 2022

  The right of Yrsa Sigurdardóttir to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  eBook ISBN 978 1 473 69355 5

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  Carmelite House

  50 Victoria Embankment

  London EC4Y 0DZ

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Contents

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  Also by Yrsa Sigurdardóttir

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Pronunciation guide for character names

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Pronunciation guide for character names

  Agnar Grétarsson (Aggi) – AK-nar GRYET-ars-son (AGG-ghee)

  Aldís Ellertsdóttir – AL-dees ELL-erts-DOE-teer

  Andrea Logadóttir – AND-ray-a LOR-ga-DOE-teer

  Baldur – BAL-door

  Bríet Hannesdóttir – BREE-ett HAN-nes-DOE-teer

  Dröfn – Drerbn

  Droplaug Thórdardóttir – DROP-lohg THOHR-thar-DOE-teer

  Einar Brjánsson – AY-narr BRYAUNS-son

  Ellý Thórdardóttir – EL-lee THOHR-thar-DOE-teer

  Erla – ED-la

  Freyja – FRAY-a

  Gudbjörg (Gudda) – GVOOTH-byerg (GOOD-da)

  Gudlaugur – GVOOTH-lohg-oor

  Hanna Lúdvíksdóttir – HAN-na LOOTH-veeks-DOE-teer

  Huldar – HOOL-dar

  Íris – EE-ris

  Jói (Jóhannes) – YOE-ee (YOE-han-nes)

  Kristbjörg – KRIST-byerg

  Lína – LEE-na

  Lúdvík Jónsson – LOOTH-veek YOHNS-son

  Mía Stefánsdóttir – MEE-ya STEFF-auns-DOE-teer

  Númi – NOO-mee

  Ólína Traustadóttir – OH-lee-na TROES-ta-DOE-teer

  Rögnvaldur Tryggvason – RERK-val-door TRIGG-va-son

  Rósa – ROH-ssa

  Sædís – SEYE-dees

  Stefán (Stebbi) – STEFF-own (STEBB-bee)

  Valgeir – VAHL-gyayr

  Eleven years earlier

  Prologue

  The shower was far hotter than Númi was used to. He was someone who preferred to avoid extremes: he didn’t like overly spicy food, swimming in the sea, loud music, CrossFit, neon colours, tequila slammers or anything else outside his comfort zone. Including scenes. He hated scenes.

  But the heat of the shower wasn’t a mistake; he had pushed the temperature controller as far into the red as he dared. While the water was heating up, he pulled off his clothes, dropping them in a pile on the floor as if he were fifteen again. As he stepped naked onto the cold tiles, he almost expected to hear his mother’s voice calling out of the past, yelling at him to pick his things up off the floor.

  The clouds of steam in the shower cubicle gave a hint of what was in store. Númi braced himself, then ducked under the scalding jet. Some things were better got over with fast, and anyway he didn’t have much time. At first the heat was unbearable. His skin turned instantly scarlet and stung all over, but he stuck it out and the discomfort soon passed. Once the pain had receded, the boiling sensation felt good. He needed it.

  Númi placed the flats of his hands on the tiled wall, leant forwards and let the water pummel his aching shoulders. His muscles weren’t sore from exercise as would once have been the case: running and sessions at the gym had taken a back seat in recent months, like so many other things that had been part of his life pre-Mía. The arrival of his daughter had opened a gulf between his old and his new existence, and so much had been left behind on the other side: sport, freedom from worry, overtime, eight hours’ sleep, dry-clean-only clothes, marathon TV sessions and a number of other things that Númi regularly reminded himself he could do without. Because life on this side, with Mía, was so much better than what he had been forced to give up.

  He had to hold on to that thought. In spite of all the crap that was going down at the moment, he couldn’t complain. Apart from this recent temporary blip, life was good for him and Stebbi: new house, new baby, a new maturity in their marriage. All three required an effort, but then you couldn’t expect to have anything for nothing. The hassle over Mía would be worth it in the long run, and, if Stebbi was right, the ordeal would soon be over. The work on the outside of the house was finished too and the builders were finally packing up their tools – months behind schedule but, still, it was something to be celebrated. According to Stebbi, they were close to settling with the contractor over the bill too, though Númi had his doubts – doubts that he tried to push away. Sometimes it was good to allow oneself a few unrealistic expectations. He had enough other crap to put up with, like his boss grumbling about his paternity leave, which had unfortunately coincided with a collapse in the markets. And now all these scenes.

  Stebbi didn’t think the drama would last much longer. Númi disagreed, but self-deception was a more comfortable option. Like when he compared weather forecasts and always chose to believe the most favourable one. These days Stebbi’s confidence suited him so much better than his own pessimism. In his heart of hearts, he didn’t believe it would ever end. No doubt they would eventually reach a settlement with the building contractor, but a conclusion to the Mía saga could take many years.

  That mustn’t be allowed to happen. He and Stebbi had to be given a chance to look after her themselves, without interference. They were more than capable of it.

  Thanks to the internet, with its bottomless well of information, there had been few big surprises. No one could say they hadn’t been prepared for Mía’s arrival. In the months leading up to her birth they had immersed themselves in reading everything they could lay their hands on, especially accounts and advice from couples in a similar position to their own: two men bringing up a child, and couples who had used surrogate mothers, whether legally or not – these had proved the most helpful.

  Then, not content with that, they’d read everything from academic articles to badly organised and largely uninformative blog posts by parents, ranging from the ridiculously positive, through the over-the-top humorous, to the downright fear-mongering.

  They had memorised every last thing, however unhelpful. Their knowledge ended up being so encyclopaedic
that nothing about their child could take them by surprise: milk intolerance, being born with teeth, every kind of chromosomal or birth defect, ear problems, sleeping problems, jaundice, premature birth, chronic hiccups, super-sensitive skin, reflux . . . They knew all the basic advice in these cases, as well as in countless others.

  But it’s one thing to be well informed, another to be confronted by the issues in real life, as they had been for just over four months now. They no longer lived in constant fear of losing or accidentally injuring her, but they were still learning. Mía changed by the week and you could say they were always absolutely confident about what to do – or, at least, they had been yesterday. Who knew what new things tomorrow would bring? She grew, put on weight, stayed awake longer, smiled and laughed as she discovered herself, the two of them and the world about her. She became conscious. It would still be a long time before she realised that her situation was different from that of most children, but for now everything was equally strange and new to her. Hopefully she would be allowed to go on feeling this way for a long time – preferably forever.

  Númi stretched and wiped the water from his eyes, then reached for the soap and lathered himself all over. The shower immediately rinsed off the foam, so he went over himself a second and a third time to be sure. He could do with a good clean, stinking as he did of baby vomit and diarrhoea. Mía had an upset stomach and he had been caught in the firing line. The internet gurus had skipped the bit about how best to deal with projectile bodily fluids.

  Luckily, Mía’s stomach seemed to have settled down and she was sleeping peacefully outside in her pram. Númi had grabbed the chance to jump in the shower, something he had been meaning to do the moment she dropped off. Instead, he’d been forced to stand arguing at the front door yet again, with vomit and worse on his face. As always, he had tried to be sympathetic and polite but had quickly lost his temper. There could be no compromise in a dispute in which one side – he and Stebbi – would not give an inch. But the fact was they were in the right.

  His hair hadn’t been spared either. Númi put down the soap and fumbled for the shampoo. He didn’t have much time. Long showers were yet another thing that belonged to his old life.

  The back of his hand brushed against the waterproof radio beside the shampoo. These days he no longer hummed along to music while having a leisurely wash. Instead, he kept an ear tuned to the silence from the baby monitor on the vanity unit, and stressed himself out by hurrying.

  The transmitter was in Mía’s pram. As long as he didn’t hear anything, he could feel relatively relaxed. But the instant she made a noise, it meant she was waking up. Then he’d have under two minutes to dry himself, dress, run downstairs and out onto the terrace. If he didn’t pick Mía up within that time, she would start crying and it was astonishing the volume those tiny lungs could produce. None of the neighbours could fail to hear her. The girl would have a bright future as an opera singer – or an air-raid siren.

  Númi squeezed the last drops of shampoo out of the bottle and started washing his hair. As he massaged his scalp, foam trickled into his ears, blocking his hearing. Or not quite, because just then he caught a faint sound from the baby monitor. He paused, wiped a hand across his face to get the soap out of his eyes, rubbed his ears and listened.

  Then he froze.

  The noise emerging in a burst of crackling from the monitor wasn’t Mía crying. It was a voice warily hushing her. Was it possible that she’d woken up and one of the neighbours had jumped over the low hedge to tend to her? Could the builders have returned? Or the postman have come round the back of the house? Númi deliberately ignored the most likely explanation.

  There was a mumble of protest from his daughter. Then nothing. No shushing, crying or crackling. Either the battery had run out or the person standing by the pram had switched off the transmitter.

  His hair still covered in shampoo, Númi leapt out of the shower, almost slipping and falling flat on the wet tiles in his panic. Flinging his dressing gown over his soaking body, he tore downstairs, taking them two at a time, sprinted to the French windows and peered out onto the terrace.

  In his haste, he had left his glasses behind on the vanity unit, but he could see that the cover had been loosened and was hanging down beside the pram, still fastened by a popper. Númi peered at the white quilt inside and breathed easier as he made out the shape of Mía lying underneath it and a glimpse of her little hat.

  His shock gave way to relief, then to fury. It must have been some stupid kids. What on earth had they been thinking? He opened the door to the terrace, feeling the cold stealing up his wet legs. Pausing to wrap his dressing gown more tightly around himself, he scanned the garden but there was no sign of any children.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck. Perhaps it wasn’t safe to let Mía sleep outdoors any more. If so, he would have even less time to get anything else done during the day, because she slept so much better outside in the fresh air, Icelandic fashion, than she did in her nursery.

  Then Númi noticed that someone had been tampering with the monitor. It wasn’t where he had left it. Instead, the aerial was sticking up between the side of the pram and the quilt. He picked up the monitor. It had been switched off.

  Númi shivered. He didn’t know whether it was from the cold or the fact that some kids had been messing around with his baby. Both, no doubt. He decided to take Mía inside, though she was bound to stir if he moved her.

  He drew the quilt gently back, hoping he could carry her indoors without waking her.

  It took him a moment or two to work out what he was seeing. The baby’s face was grey, its small lips were cracked, its wide-open eyes dry and unseeing. It was dead.

  But the dead child was not Mía.

  Five months earlier

  Chapter 1

  The little white coffin could hardly be seen for all the flowers. The wreaths and bouquets came in a wealth of different colours: pink, red, white, yellow, and one made up mainly of green. It wasn’t as if people could have chosen their floral tributes according to his daughter’s favourite colour or flower, as Íris’s life had been too short for her to form a definite opinion on these things. And, anyway, she had spent a large part of it in a hospital ward. She’d had a favourite food: pizza, a favourite dessert: ice-cream, and a favourite animal: a panda. She’d had six favourite songs too, which formed the playlist he’d made for her and never had a chance to add to. Not that it had seemed to matter. She’d been perfectly content to listen to them on repeat, using the pink headphones with the pussy-cat ears that her grandparents had given her for Christmas.

  Apart from that, Íris had had few treasured possessions, with the exception of a cuddly toy that she’d rarely let out of her grasp. This was the little penguin that was now lying on her chest under her crossed arms in the coffin.

  At Rögnvaldur’s side, his wife, Aldís, was silently weeping, the tears running down her pale cheeks to drip onto her chest. Ever-expanding wet patches decorated the colourful top that she was wearing while everyone else, including him, was in black. When he’d found her sitting on their bed before they set off for church, he’d asked if she was going to put on the black dress that was laid out beside her. But she’d just sat there, staring into space, and shaken her head. So he’d nodded and let her come as she was, in the clothes she’d been wearing the night their daughter died. She had taken off the shirt when they got home, put it in a bag and shoved it in the wardrobe. He hadn’t asked any questions, just assumed she’d wanted to preserve the smell of Íris, who had been lying in her arms when she drew her last breath. By then she’d been in hospital for two weeks and to him barely any trace had remained of her own sweet, innocent scent. It had been replaced by the smell of hospital: a reek of drugs, disinfectant and dressings. A taint of impending death.

  The vicar announced that they would now sing a hymn, then turned to the altar and started fiddling with ­something.

  Rögnvaldur felt a sudden impulse to stand up and scream. To silence the choir and throw out the mourners. Although most of the congregation were genuinely upset by Íris’s death, their grief was nothing compared to what her parents were going through. He and Aldís were like zombies. They moved, breathed and ate without any need of oxygen or appetite for meals. Friends and family members regularly brought them offerings of food, but apart from those they went without. Once the supply of meals dried up, he supposed they would shrivel up and die. It was inevitable that people would withdraw their support. He and Aldís weren’t exactly easy company at the moment, answering if spoken to but contributing nothing to the conversation beyond that. They had nothing to say. Not yesterday, not today or tomorrow. Probably never again.