The Reckoning: Children's House Book 2 (Freyja and Huldar) Read online

  ‘Stebbi stopped work immediately. His digger’s still where he left it.’

  Huldar nodded. ‘You’re quite sure no one brought it here this morning – no unauthorised person or Sorpa employee? Could it just be a coffin someone was throwing out?’

  The rows of bales mounted up in a series of steps like a ziggurat. The coffin was impossible to miss; it perched on one of the ledges, standing out black and filthy against the multicoloured rubbish. Geiri turned from the mountain of refuse to Huldar. ‘All the waste is sorted before it arrives. Coffins aren’t disposed of here, so it can’t have come from our centre. And there’s no way anyone unauthorised could have lugged it in after we started work this morning.’

  Geiri looked as if he was about to add something, then closed his mouth again. Huldar was relieved: given half a chance, the man had a tendency to ramble on about solid-waste statistics and the importance of his and Stebbi’s work.

  ‘Is there a security guard here at night?’

  Geiri snorted. ‘A security guard? Whatever for? No one’s likely to steal this rubbish. The sorting centre’s removed anything of value.’

  ‘What about CCTV?’ Huldar hadn’t spotted any cameras, either on the site or on the access road, so Geiri’s answer came as no surprise. The man or men who stole the coffin from Hafnarfjördur Cemetery last night must have driven it here and deposited it on the waste mound, all without being caught on film.

  ‘What time do you close?’

  ‘Five. We open at eight.’

  The grave robber must have done the deed in the middle of the night rather than just after closing time. First he would have had to dig up the coffin, taking care not to be seen, though since the grave wasn’t visible from the surrounding streets, he wouldn’t have needed to worry about passing traffic. Huldar didn’t doubt that the coffin was the one that had disappeared from Einar Adalbertsson’s grave. It was unthinkable that they could be dealing with two unrelated cases – a vanishing coffin and a different coffin turning up the next day. The caretaker at the cemetery had been unable to find a stake, but after scraping away at the soil in the grave with the mini-digger, he had swiftly established that it was indeed empty. The vandals had been grave robbers: they had stolen the digger, dug down to the coffin, hauled it out, then filled in the hole to conceal the fact. Goodness knows what could have motivated them. ‘Do you think the coffin was dumped up there to be found or disposed of?’

  ‘Eh?’ Unsurprisingly, since Huldar had been thinking aloud, Geiri didn’t immediately grasp what he meant. But he cottoned on fast. ‘All I can say is that if I’d done it myself, it would have been because I was hoping it would be found. There’s no way it could have disappeared among the bales. But it wasn’t me, and I’d bet my life it wasn’t anyone else here. I can’t begin to guess what the people who did this were trying to achieve.’

  The sun peeped out from behind the clouds and low in the sky though it was, Huldar had to shield his eyes. ‘And you’re sure there’s a body inside?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say sure. But me and Stebbi lifted it a little and it’s definitely not empty. The lid’s still intact so we thought we’d better call out the police rather than break it open. Before this I worked at the sorting centre. I’m used to people throwing out some weird shit but this beats everything.’

  ‘I can believe it.’ In more than a decade in the police, Huldar had never been called out to a cemetery, let alone for a coffin with a body in it. He was itching to look Einar Adalbertsson up. This must be more than a prank. Dumping the man at the municipal tip had to be symbolic: plainly, somebody thought he didn’t deserve to lie in consecrated ground. Though it was odd that he had been allowed to lie undisturbed for so long; according to the inscription on his headstone he had died eleven years ago. Why wait all this time to disinter him?

  ‘When do you think we’ll be able to get back to work? Overtime’s frowned on here.’ Geiri nodded towards yet another lorry tipping out a load of bales.

  ‘Ring them and put a stop to any further deliveries.’ The bales slid off the back of the lorry and landed in a heap. Some rolled off and one almost hit Huldar’s car on the passenger side. Freyja’s expression was anything but amused. Huldar reflected that the day that had begun so promisingly was rapidly going downhill and could hardly get any worse. Instead of taking Freyja to interview Thröstur and possibly Jón as well, Huldar had dragged her first to a cemetery, then to a dump. The only thing needed to complete this disastrous day would be to take her to meet one of his sisters. He had long since given up introducing prospective girlfriends to them because his sisters invariably managed, by some mysterious means, to bring up the subject of what a huge head he’d had as a baby. A pumpkin was their favourite simile. None of the girlfriends who’d heard the story of his birth could be persuaded to sleep with him again.

  ‘That’ll only shift the problem on to them. And they haven’t got a big enough warehouse to store the bales in.’

  At this rate Huldar would have to order the inhabitants of Reykjavík to stop throwing away rubbish until further notice. He repeated his order, politely but firmly: ‘Stop the bales. The Forensics team are on their way and they won’t be long.’ He glanced back at the battered coffin. The beads of moisture on the worn lid glittered like diamonds. ‘It’s not like they’ll waste much time looking for clues.’ Loose rubbish lay scattered over the entire area. It would be impossible to tell what belonged to the grave robbers, even if they had left traces behind. This morning’s gale had swept the thin layer of snow not only off the coffin but also off all the bales around it, obliterating any signs of footprints. The forensic technicians would probably do no more than put on their protective overalls and carry the coffin down off the stack. ‘When you spotted the coffin, were there any tracks or other marks visible?’

  Geiri shook his head. ‘No. The snow had started to clear away by then. It blew off the coffin lid first, because it’s smooth. But if I had to guess, I’d say it was put there before the snow started last night, or while it was still falling.’

  ‘So you have no idea how they got it up there?’ The ledge the coffin was perched on was about three metres off the ground. It wouldn’t have been especially difficult for two or three people to lug it up there between them.

  ‘Well, I expect they used a rope. There are rope ends sticking out from under the coffin. It wouldn’t have been difficult to haul it up there.’

  ‘For two men? Or three?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, but I’d think three would be more than enough; two would be ideal, but even one could have managed it alone, if he was strong enough.’

  The vehicle belonging to Forensics approached down the access road and parked beside Huldar’s car. Two men Huldar recognised stepped out and wrinkled their noses when the stench of the rubbish hit them. But they were used to worse and quickly shrugged it off. Huldar prayed that they wouldn’t keep him there long. He’d had quite enough of this.

  Freyja craned as far away from Huldar as she could. He himself was so inured to the smell by then that he didn’t care. Besides, he was used to her keeping as much space between them as possible. It didn’t require a bad smell. He had been dreading his return to the car, fully expecting her to have a go at him for wasting her time, but not a bit of it. Instead, she had bombarded him with questions and seemed to have been paying close attention to the forensic technicians. She didn’t once ask how she was supposed to explain to her bosses what she had been doing all day.

  But there was a catch. As soon as he got in the car, Freyja announced that he had to stop off at a children’s clothes shop because she was going round to see someone straight after work and needed to take a gift. Huldar saw no reason why he shouldn’t do her this favour, if that would make them quits. While she was choosing clothes he could grab the opportunity to ring Erla and bring her up to speed. He had ordered Forensics to take the coffin to the National Hospital pathology department. Naturally they would have to check whether there was a body i
nside and, if so, whether it belonged to the right man. For all they knew, the grave robbers might have put some incriminating evidence inside with the corpse, though there had been no indication that the lid had been tampered with.

  ‘I did a search on Einar Adalbertsson while you were examining the rubbish.’

  ‘And?’ Huldar was forced to stop at a red light, just as the traffic was finally gaining momentum.

  ‘He appears to have been a model citizen. Former chairman of Hafnarfjördur town council, president of all kinds of associations and so on. There’s no sign that he did anything to deserve this humiliation.’ Freyja fiddled with her phone. ‘Though admittedly this is from an obituary, so you wouldn’t expect it to dwell on his faults. For all we know, he could have been a complete shit. Other than that, there’s not much about him online. Only short news items about long-ago council business, photos of him signing contracts or standing behind other men doing the same kind of thing.’

  ‘Perhaps he was chosen at random.’ Huldar moved off again. ‘Though it seems unlikely. Moving a random stranger from the cemetery to the dump is an awful lot of hassle just for a prank. I can’t imagine anyone thinking it was funny or clever.’ The traffic continued to inch along and he puffed out irritably. ‘What about family? Was he married? Any kids? Perhaps they’re involved, or someone did it to get even with them.’

  Freyja brushed her finger over the screen until she found the right place in the obituary. ‘Yes. One daughter and one son from a first marriage. And a childless second marriage to a wife who predeceased him. His son seems to have died too – he can only have been eighteen. But his daughter and first wife are still alive, or at least they were when the obituary was written.’

  ‘Try doing a search on them.’

  Freyja fiddled with her phone again and examined it in silence, then finally looked up. ‘The daughter’s alive but her mother, the first wife, died five years ago. The daughter lives in Norway where she runs a nursery. So neither of them are likely to have done this.’

  ‘Unless the daughter’s in Iceland at the moment. Maybe it’s a belated act of revenge against her father for abandoning her mother.’ Huldar had no real faith in this explanation, but after all, there was no obviously normal, logical answer to what they were dealing with.

  Freyja turned her attention to the phone again. ‘No. Her Facebook page is public and yesterday she uploaded a photo of herself with a group of children at the nursery. Is that allowed?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m no expert in online privacy.’ Huldar switched lanes to turn into the Kringlan shopping centre. The action almost made his arms ache. He avoided shopping malls like the plague, only visiting them under duress in the run-up to Christmas when he would wander around aimlessly in search of presents for his family. In the end he invariably threw himself on the mercy of the shop assistants, and he suspected that his sisters now owned things that hadn’t been selling as well as anticipated and had thus been fobbed off on hapless men. ‘I suppose I’d better ring her later. You never know, she might be able to tell us who had a grudge against her father. Presumably she’ll need to be informed anyway. She’s his next of kin.’ Freyja didn’t seem to be listening; all her attention was focused on the phone. ‘Find anything interesting?’ he asked.

  ‘Hang on. I’m looking at the second wife. Perhaps we’ll find something there.’

  ‘Unlikely. If she’s dead and they had no children.’

  ‘She might have left her husband for Einar. Her ex could be involved.’

  Huldar found it hard to imagine an old-age pensioner excavating the grave and doing the necessary heavy lifting. Who would have helped him? His roommate at the nursing home?

  ‘Christ!’ Freyja recoiled as if she’d encountered something disgusting. ‘You’ll never guess what.’

  ‘I give up.’ Huldar drove into Kringlan, inwardly shuddering at the thought of the booming music and endless displays of goods. Ahead of them was a line of vehicles queuing for the car park. The snow evidently hadn’t deterred the public from their favourite pastime.

  ‘Einar’s second wife already had a son before they met. She doesn’t seem to have been married to his father, at least there’s no mention of any previous husband in her obituary.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The son’s name is Jón. Jón Jónsson.’ Freyja lowered her phone to her lap. ‘Her grandchildren’s names are Thröstur and Sigrún.’ She stared wonderingly at Huldar. ‘Wow.’

  Huldar’s hands tightened on the wheel as he prepared to swerve out of the queue, but Freyja read his mind and insisted he keep his promise. She also insisted he come inside with her, no doubt fearing he would do a runner. She had good reason to distrust him on that score.

  While Huldar’s brain was crashing through all kinds of theories about Jón’s possible role in the theft of the coffin, he was continually required to nod and fake an opinion on a succession of tiny girls’ outfits that Freyja kept shoving in his face. All his answers were along the lines of: ‘That’s nice, I’d buy that’, but nothing worked. Finally she chose something without asking his opinion and they were able to leave.

  Once out in the open air again his thoughts crystallised.

  Number one: track down Jón Jónsson and call him in for questioning.

  Number two: he had no idea what would happen next.

  Only that it would happen.

  Chapter 17

  You could have knocked Freyja down with a feather: Saga, Baldur’s baby daughter, was the spitting image of the internet sensation, Angry Cat. Remembering the photos of her brother as a little boy, Freyja had been expecting thick blonde curls, blue eyes and a sweet smile, but nothing could have been further from the truth. She kept thinking about the 0.01 per cent possibility that Baldur was not in fact the father. Saga was dark and her rosy lips were turned down in a grimace that her mother assured Freyja was a permanent fixture. Her only resemblance to Baldur as a child lay in her adorable apple cheeks. But Freyja didn’t dare touch them. The little girl’s eyes followed her every move, her down-turned mouth indicating that she was expecting the worst. Freyja wasn’t going to risk patting her in case she started howling. The visit had got off to a ropey enough start already.

  It reminded Freyja of all the times she and Baldur had gone on visits with their grandparents and been shooed off to play with the other children so the grown-ups could talk in peace. The encounters would quickly descend into embarrassed glances once all the obvious, easy questions had been asked: what school do you go to? Do you play football? Have you got a dog? The point at which silence descended was usually the question about what sort of games console they had. The other children simply couldn’t relate to kids who had never owned such a thing.

  There had been no need for anything to trigger the awkwardness on the present occasion. It had started as soon as the door opened. Fanney, Saga’s mother, was initially hesitant about letting Freyja in, and, even when she did, seemed unable to make up her mind what to think. She alternated between being terribly nice and friendly one minute, then frosty and sharp the next. Yet she had agreed to this visit; it wasn’t as if Freyja had turned up out of the blue and thrust a present at her in the hope of being allowed in. The dress she’d bought was too cheerful for a child who would probably look better in muted colours – in shades of grey or funereal black, for example. Certainly not something with a strawberry print and puffball skirt, which, now she came to think of it, had been Huldar’s choice.

  The dress clashed with their surroundings too. The flat was immaculate; every object placed just so, surrounded by a protective zone at least a metre wide. It reminded Freyja of some of her girlfriends’ homes where, whether it was a cream jug or a lemon press, as long as an item was expensive and had a famous designer label, it would be placed in a conspicuous spot. One long shelf sported nothing but a single handbag. There was no sign of any children’s toys and Freyja hoped for sullen little Saga’s sake that there was a nursery somewhere down the hall. B
ut she suspected that the same empty minimalism characterised the whole flat.

  ‘You don’t have any children yourself?’ Fanney sipped her coffee from a Royal Copenhagen cup. Freyja could have sworn she had deliberately drawn out the movement to show off the stamp on the base.

  ‘No. I’m single. At present.’ She gave the woman a brief, on-off smile, wishing the conversation would move on from her private life.

  ‘That’s better, actually. It means I don’t need to vet your husband or boyfriend as well.’ Fanney replaced her cup daintily on its pretty saucer. ‘You seem fine, and since you’re a qualified child psychologist I assume you must be reliable and good with children. At least I hope so. And since there isn’t a boyfriend, I’m only taking a chance with one person, not two. I must say that’s a great relief. I feel much easier in my mind. Now that I’ve met you too, of course.’

  Freyja smiled in embarrassment. She had no idea what the woman was on about and her mind kept drifting back to the case that Huldar had mixed her up in. She answered as vaguely as she could. ‘Right, thanks.’

  ‘Baldur assured me your flat was suitable and child-friendly. Can I trust him or do I need to come round and inspect it for myself?’

  ‘Oh, I think you can take his word for it.’ Freyja wouldn’t dream of letting this woman see her place. In comparison to this apartment, Baldur’s flat resembled a charity shop. But Fanney’s question puzzled her, though the woman seemed sufficiently satisfied by her answer to forgo a visit, or rather inspection. ‘Sorry, I’m not quite sure I follow. Why would you want to inspect my flat?’

  Fanney looked astonished. ‘You weren’t assuming you’d be able to stay here?’

  Little Saga sat on the floor, conscientiously turning her head to watch whoever was speaking, like a spectator at a tennis match. Suddenly she furrowed her brows in a frown, which made her appear even angrier. Although she was far too young to understand what they were saying, she was sensitive enough to pick up on the vibes: clearly, something interesting was going on.