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

  ‘No. I’ve forgotten. It was almost sixteen years ago. It’s amazing that I can remember anything at all.’

  Freyja decided to leave it for the time being. All she could think about right now was cold water – she was so parched her tongue was literally shrivelling up. ‘Well. Thanks anyway. I expect the police will put in a request shortly to Hafnarfjördur Council or the Child Protection Agency for the reports, and that’ll clarify matters. In the meantime it would be great if you could sort out the authorisation so Thröstur’s old headteacher can give me a copy of everything he’s got.’

  Sólveig said she would get it to her later.

  Freyja felt a little dizzy when she stood up but managed to keep her balance and leave the office without accident. She gulped down a glass of water at the sink, filled it up again, then went to her own office. Shortly afterwards she heard the door of Sólveig’s room closing, followed by the front door. She had gone home, though the working day had only just begun. Strange. And of course no authorisation had been left in Freyja’s pigeonhole or in Sólveig’s deserted office.

  By lunchtime Freyja was feeling more herself. The ibuprofen provided by the Children’s House nurse had helped, as had the hamburger she had washed down with a milkshake for lunch. By the time the phone call came from the police station at Hlemmur she was feeling ready for anything. The man who rang introduced himself as Gudmundur Lárusson and said he had been given her name and number by Huldar who hadn’t had time to deal with the matter himself. The request was simple but urgent: could she come straight over to Hlemmur and help the police talk to someone who had walked in off the street and was, it turned out, connected to a case Huldar was working on. Huldar had said Freyja was familiar with the background and should be able to help calm down the apparently inconsolable woman. There followed a description of the fit she had thrown in the lobby, screaming at the receptionist until he rang upstairs for assistance.

  When Gudmundur finally got round to telling her the woman’s name and her connection to Huldar’s case, Freyja shot out of her chair, into her coat and out to the car with the man’s parting words still ringing in her ears. The woman who had created a scene at the police station was none other than Dagmar, the mother of Vaka, the little girl Jón Jónsson had murdered.

  The traffic was light and there were few people about, but Freyja kept hitting red lights and sat there impatiently, her fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Would she make it to the station before Vaka’s mother left? She wondered why Huldar hadn’t rung himself and this brought her back to the bigger question of why he had walked out on her last night. She still couldn’t work it out.

  Freyja didn’t waste time putting any coins in the parking meter by the police station – if she got a ticket Gudmundur could no doubt use his influence to have it waived. She sprinted into the lobby and introduced herself breathlessly to the officer on duty. Presumably he was the man who had been subjected to a tirade by Vaka’s mother. He gave no sign of having been shaken. In fact, he was singularly uncommunicative, though he did manage to point her in the right direction.

  Gudmundur Lárusson came out to greet her, looking white-haired and rather frail. But the huge fist resting on the door-handle was testament to his former physical strength. ‘I’ve put her in here – it’s a sort of waiting room that we don’t use much. She refused to talk to me. She seems very deflated after her outburst, poor woman. Hopefully you’ll be able to comfort her and get some sense out of her, if that’s possible. Maybe she lost her mind after that terrible business with her daughter. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened to a parent in her position. I’m considering calling her husband to come in and fetch her. What do you think?’

  Freyja nodded distractedly, eager to go in and see the woman.

  Gudmundur opened the door and showed her in, making no move to follow, then closed it behind her. Freyja assumed he would go directly to ring Orri, Dagmar’s husband.

  The windowless room could hardly have been more austere. Two small sofas faced each other across a coffee table, on which lay a small pile of tattered glossy magazines, with the cover missing from the one on top. On the table in the corner was a tangle of computer leads, looking as if they’d been dumped there. The woman was sitting on one of the sofas, her face buried in her hands. She didn’t seem to have noticed that she was no longer alone.

  Freyja moved closer, sat down on the sofa opposite and coughed. ‘Hello. Are you Dagmar?’

  The woman looked up, her red-eyed, tear-swollen face registering surprise. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘My name’s Freyja. I was asked to speak to you. I know a little about your daughter’s case.’

  ‘My daughter’s case?’ Dagmar narrowed her eyes angrily. ‘My daughter’s case? Are you joking? My daughter never had any case.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I put that badly.’

  Freyja remained silent until the woman’s anger had subsided. Now she was staring blankly into space, as if she didn’t know where she was. Her look of bemusement briefly transformed her into a younger version of herself, the deep worry lines between her eyes fading, her puffy eyes widening and her slack, half-open mouth hinting at an innocence of which she had long ago been robbed.

  ‘Who exactly are you, Freyja? Why aren’t you in uniform?’ Dagmar scowled again, twisting her upper lip into a sneer. Her real age reasserted itself.

  ‘I’m not with the police. I work for the Children’s House but I sometimes help the police with cases relating to children.’

  ‘Is that so?’ Dagmar snorted in disgust, rolling her eyes heavenwards as if to ask the powers that be what they were thinking of to burden her with this crap. ‘Great. Are you a sociologist then? Are they planning to write an article about what happens to people who lose a child?’

  ‘I’m a psychologist and I’m not writing any article.’ This was true, despite frequent exhortations by the Child Protection Agency to their staff to deliver papers at conferences and submit articles to academic journals. ‘I’m only here to give you a chance to get things off your chest. I’m assuming you came here for a reason but you haven’t managed to make yourself understood yet. Unless you simply wanted to vent your anger. This is as good a place for that as any. Better than taking it out on your husband, for example.’

  ‘My husband? I’m single.’

  So there was little point in Gudmundur phoning Orri. No one would be collecting Dagmar any time soon. Although Freyja had thought about Vaka’s parents from time to time, she hadn’t looked up what had happened to them after they lost their daughter. It wasn’t particularly surprising that they had separated: the divorce rate among parents who had experienced a trauma of this type was higher than average, especially if they’d only had the one child. ‘I don’t suppose it’ll help but I’m single too and I know it’s not always easy, especially when you’re feeling down and have no shoulder to cry on.’

  ‘Please, spare me the sentimental crap. It’s not like we’re friends.’

  Freyja was unperturbed by the harsh words. Dagmar wasn’t the first person to react like this; the parents of the kids who came to the Children’s House rarely had their tempers under control and often lashed out verbally. The thin-skinned tended not to survive as psychologists. ‘Of course not. Then perhaps you’d like to tell me why you came here?’

  Dagmar drew herself up, smoothed the lapels of her coat and rubbed the creases out of her trouser legs. It was a pathetic attempt to restore her pride, not unlike the methods used by Freyja and Baldur when they were young. She was probably regretting her behaviour down in reception. ‘I came here to tell the police what I thought of them. And once I’d got started, I remembered that I’m disgusted with the whole justice system, including people like you; people who are labouring under the delusion that they can glue something back together when it’s been smashed to smithereens.’

  ‘I’m not here to give you counselling. Though I don’t think it would hurt for you to seek help. There are various methods o
f dealing with grief that could work for you. The grief won’t go away, as you know, but it is possible to make life a bit more bearable. It’s never too late to try therapy, even many years after your loss.’

  ‘I’m not interested. Haven’t I made myself clear enough? You asked why I came here and I’m telling you. There’s something wrong with the way this country’s run and I wanted to say so. Somebody has to, or this disastrous, ineffectual machine will just keep grinding on, convinced that everybody’s satisfied. Well, we’re not all satisfied. I’m definitely not.’

  ‘Could you give an example of what you mean?’

  ‘How is it possible that a man who rapes and murders a child is allowed to go free after a few years, while the child’s family is given a life sentence? How is that possible?’ The woman’s voice broke and she lapsed into silence, all the air going out of her again like a burst balloon.

  ‘It’s very unfair, I agree. But that’s our justice system and we just have to hope that it serves society on some level. If people are given life sentences and have no chance to turn their lives around, there’s a risk they’ll commit even worse crimes when they feel cornered. Murderers might start killing witnesses, since it would make no difference to them; they’d be condemned to spend their life in prison anyway. Maybe these arguments don’t sound very convincing but there’s no perfect system when it comes to punishing people.’

  Dagmar had listened. She hadn’t interrupted or rolled her eyes but listened attentively, her head lowered. ‘I should go. I don’t know what I was thinking of.’

  Before she could rise to her feet, Freyja seized her chance. She didn’t want to have to tell Huldar that she’d extracted nothing of interest, merely spent the time debating the rights and wrongs of the Icelandic justice system. ‘It’s twelve years since your daughter was murdered. Have you been here before for the same reason? If not, what made you come today?’

  ‘I saw him. The bastard. Walking along the same pavements as I do, breathing the same air—’ Dagmar broke off and shook her head. She sniffed, then continued: ‘He looked happy. As if the years in prison had meant nothing to him. Before we divorced, my ex-husband pointed out that I’d started walking with a stoop. I didn’t mention that he had one too. I know I still walk like that. So does he.’

  Freyja sat and watched the woman without speaking. Dagmar’s shoulders shook and a few tears dripped on to her pale-coloured trousers. After a little pause, Freyja asked gently: ‘Where was this?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’

  Dagmar glanced up. ‘Are you keeping him under surveillance then?’

  ‘Yes and no.’ Freyja kept her answer deliberately vague. She didn’t want to get the woman’s hopes up. Although Huldar wanted to speak to Jón, that wasn’t the same as keeping tabs on him.

  ‘Why wasn’t I informed? Why? Would it have killed someone or messed up the budget?’ Dagmar stared at Freyja, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘I’d have liked a chance to prepare myself. Is that too much to ask?’

  Freyja wished with all her heart that the door would open and Huldar would come in and take over. Even old Gudmundur would do. Anyone who could explain why the system worked like this. Was it really true that no one bore a responsibility to inform the victims or next of kin in cases like this? In Iceland it was almost inevitable that people would run into one another sooner or later. ‘No, it’s not asking too much. I’m afraid I don’t know enough about it; I assume it’s a question of protecting people’s privacy.’ She took a deep breath and quickly continued before Dagmar had a chance to freak out again. ‘I’m not responsible for this legislation but in my opinion they should have let you and your ex-husband know. And Jón’s family too, but they weren’t informed either. Whether it was a mistake or standard practice, I don’t know.’

  Dagmar nodded slowly. ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘Would you mind saying where you saw Jón?’

  ‘Like I said, does it matter?’

  ‘I don’t know. Possibly.’

  Dagmar pondered the matter as if it was a secret she was reluctant to share. ‘He was walking along Borgartún. This morning.’

  ‘Where exactly on Borgartún?’

  ‘By one of the office buildings. He gave the impression he was snooping around for something. Maybe he was collecting cans for the recycling money.’ She paused, then added harshly: ‘I hope so.’

  ‘Was this near the big accountancy firm, by any chance?’

  ‘How the hell did you know that?’ The fragile sense of trust that had been developing between them seemed on the point of shattering.

  Freyja dodged the question, though she guessed the woman wouldn’t let her off so easily. ‘Do you know a man called Kolbeinn Ragnarsson who works in the building?’

  ‘No. Should I?’

  Again, Freyja avoided answering Dagmar’s question. ‘What about Benedikt Toft, a retired prosecutor?’

  ‘No. What’s going on? Who are these men? Paedophiles?’

  Freyja was disconcerted. ‘No, they’re not suspected of anything like that.’ She had compared the initials in the time-capsule letter with the names of paedophiles known to have been active ten years ago but had found no correspondence. Nor did she recognise the initials from any cases that had come through the Children’s House.

  At that moment the door opened and Freyja was saved from having to explain why she had mentioned these two men. She regretted having done so now and offered up a heartfelt prayer that Dagmar wouldn’t go out looking for Kolbeinn because she suspected him of having some connection to Jón Jónsson. Gudmundur Lárusson was standing in the doorway.

  ‘Your husband’s here to fetch you.’

  ‘My husband?’ Dagmar stood up. She flushed, with fury, not embarrassment. ‘What the hell’s wrong with you people?’

  A man of about forty pushed past Gudmundur. He was holding a car key in both hands, fiddling with it like a Catholic with a rosary. ‘Come on, Dagmar. I’ll give you a lift home.’ The man avoided meeting his ex-wife’s eye. ‘They didn’t know we’re divorced and I didn’t correct them. I just wanted to help.’

  ‘Help?’ Dagmar adjusted the bag on her shoulder and clutched at the collar of her coat as if to hide her bosom. ‘I don’t need any help from you.’ She walked out without a word to Freyja, shoved at Gudmundur who had inadvertently got in her way, and stormed off down the corridor.

  ‘Please excuse her.’ The husband looked shamefaced, as if her behaviour was his fault. Perhaps he had walked out on her when things hit rock bottom, unable to live with a woman who would always remind him of what they had lost. Perhaps he had been prepared to put the past behind them but she hadn’t. Or vice versa. Or perhaps the love they had once shared had simply dried up. ‘She’s not normally like that. Or she didn’t use to be.’ He nodded goodbye and hurried after the wife he had once loved.

  Belatedly Freyja remembered what had upset Dagmar and brought her to the police station. She ran after the man, calling: ‘Jón Jónsson’s just got out of prison. That’s why she came here in a fury. I thought you ought to know.’

  Orri stopped dead, and slowly turned. His calm manner had vanished and there was a sudden crazy glint in his eyes, as if he were a hand grenade and Freyja had just pulled out the pin. He took a step closer. ‘What did you say?’ His voice slowed and deepened. Perhaps they weren’t so different after all, Orri and Dagmar.

  Freyja instinctively retreated two steps, closer to Gudmundur. She should have kept her mouth shut. Perhaps this was why people in their position weren’t informed when prisoners were released.

  Chapter 20

  As so often, it wasn’t one big thing but a number of smaller ones that finally changed Erla’s mind about Jón Jónsson’s possible connection to the murder in the garage and the severed hands. Huldar was too delighted to care what had brought about her change of heart. Erla was in charge and without her support his hands were tied; there were too many ill-defined strands to un
tangle, too many jobs to be done. Hard though it was, he hid his satisfaction. He felt like he had that time he scored the winning goal in the match against the other class in his year. His troubles were behind him; the way forward was clear. At nine years old he had been confident that his victorious goal was his passport to a professional career abroad, though, as it later transpired, his career as a footballer had peaked in that moment. Similarly he was now confident that his victory over Erla’s obstinacy would lead to a breakthrough in the murder case. Although the goals were different, the sense of triumph was the same. He almost felt like going out and celebrating with a coconut truffle like he had when he was nine.

  Huldar’s hopes had first been raised as he and Erla stood in the corridor after being turfed out of Kolbeinn’s hospital room. She may not have been particularly adroit at social interaction but Erla was a good detective and knew how to read people. Kolbeinn’s lie hadn’t escaped her. It was obvious that Jón Jónsson’s name had switched on a light-bulb somewhere inside his head.

  The phone call from the pathology lab had been another contributing factor. After examining the body in the coffin, the pathologist was cautiously confident that the cause of death did not match that given on Einar Adalbertsson’s death certificate. He wouldn’t provide any further details over the phone but asked Erla to come over herself or send a representative. The officer who’d gone in her place had yet to return.

  Yet another factor was Erla’s telephone conversation with Einar’s surviving daughter. Far from being upset when informed about her father’s unscheduled trip to the dump, the woman had retorted that for all she cared his coffin could stay where it belonged, with the other rubbish. Then she had hung up.

  The tipping point probably came when Erla tried to track down Jón Jónsson himself. She had taken the trouble to inform Huldar that this was only because she suspected him of having stolen his stepfather’s coffin, but Huldar knew better. She was beginning to have her doubts. He sat in her office while she made one phone call after another, always receiving the same answers. No one knew what had become of the man. His ex-wife and kids weren’t answering the phone and the Prison Service was unable to help. It was the same story at Litla-Hraun, at Reykjavík social services and at all the homeless shelters: none of them had seen or heard from Jón or had any idea what had become of him. It was as if the ground had swallowed him up the instant he stepped out of the prison transport in the centre of Reykjavík, a free man.