Why Did You Lie? Page 2

The helicopter is hovering over the lighthouse now and there’s no denying that it was a reasonable question. Apart from the little tower and the square helipad, built much later, Stóridrangur consists of nothing but sheer drops. On either side of the manmade structures the rock juts out, steep, jagged and apparently inaccessible. The photos Helgi had found online were only a pale reflection of the reality. Yet again, the real world has trumped the two-dimensional hands down, leaving him feeling hopelessly discouraged. How is he to capture this heart-stopping grandeur? To cause people’s jaws to drop as his is doing now? He turns the camera slightly to compensate for the tilting of the helicopter and snaps away. He has in the past lost heart in the face of smaller challenges than the one confronting him now, but this time he resolves to push away his fears and let himself by guided by his photographer’s instincts. If he messes up, that’s tough; he’ll still be in possession of a photo series that few others could boast of. The coastguard rarely allows photographers along on trips like this, and who could afford to hire a private helicopter for the purpose? He’d been so astonished when his request was granted that he’d stared, stunned, at the receiver long after the person at the other end had hung up. Things never usually go his way, so this is great news. As long as the pictures turn out well.

  The helicopter is hovering over the islet, obscuring their view of the landing pad directly beneath them. The only window of the small white building below has been blocked up, so it looks as if it is staring at them with a blind eye.

  ‘Welcome to Thrídrangar lighthouse.’ The pilots look round, grinning as if at some private joke. Then, catching each other’s eye, they fiddle with various controls on the instrument panel. They almost seem to be suppressing laughter at the thought of the conditions awaiting their passengers. And maybe they’re right; the other four stare down intently at this extraordinary place which is to be their home for the next twenty-four hours, and none of them appears to relish the thought of leaving the helicopter. Especially not given that the only available route is straight down. Helgi takes a few shots of the lighthouse but the helicopter is wobbling more than before and he finds it hard to keep the subject steady in the viewfinder.

  ‘We’re ready to deploy the winch, so you’d better finish up and return to your seat.’ The pilot sounds more authoritative than before. Helgi takes two more pictures, aware, without bothering to check, that he’s botched them, then squeezes back into his seat and only then does he unclip himself from the life-line. In its place he fastens the seat strap.

  The co-pilot clambers back to them, closes the door and starts busying himself with winch, cables and strops. He slaps the knee of the passenger nearest the door and gets the man to stand up while he fastens the equipment around him. They talk together while the pilot jerks hard on all the ropes of the harness to test them. Then they take up position by the door, which the co-pilot reopens without batting an eyelid. The passenger takes a small, involuntary step backwards and the other man explains what to do with a good deal of gesturing. The next thing they know, the man is sitting in the doorway, his legs dangling. The others avoid looking at each other but all three press themselves instinctively as far back in their seats as they can. Soon it’ll be their turn.

  The other man goes next, then the woman. Helgi admires the way she copes with her nerves, which are betrayed by the trembling of her slim hands and her pale, hollow-eyed profile. He gives in to the temptation to take some pictures of her preparations and regrets not having done the same for the men. It would have been amusing to compare their reactions. They had puffed out their chests and held their heads high, filling their lungs with air and their minds with imaginary courage. Their playacting didn’t end until they began their descent and the last that could be seen of them was a terrified scarlet face and bulging eyes. The woman’s expression shows a healthy respect for her fear coupled with a stoical calm that he wishes he himself possessed. Especially as he’s next.

  Once the strop and cable have been winched up again, the pilot beckons him over and Helgi stands up, knees trembling. Like a condemned man on his way to the scaffold, he allows the other man to truss him in ropes and push his legs into the strop, then flinches as he checks his handiwork. He is overwhelmed by a familiar sense of shame at being fat as the man touches his body, and wonders if the equipment is calibrated for a lighter weight than his. What if he plummets out of control because he’s too heavy? But he says nothing, reluctant to discuss his weight with a stranger, and positions himself like the others in the opening, legs dangling above the pillar of rock. Craning forwards, he looks down at the faces of the other three on the helipad. They gaze up at him, waving cheerily as if to beckon him and let him know that the descent is not as bad as expected. They survived it and he will too. Like passengers climbing off a rollercoaster and waving to the next in line.

  Then of course the rollercoaster flies off the rails on a sharp bend because one of the passengers is too heavy.

  Helgi lets go and starts his descent. He feels the wind rushing up his body and the line seems terribly thin and inadequate. The only thought in his head is whether he’s far enough down to survive a fall, when quite suddenly he feels a hard bump and a jerk that runs up his spine like a pianist running his fingers over the keys. He straightens up, grins at the other three and hurriedly undoes the clips on his harness so he won’t be dragged back into the air. The worst moment is when he has released all bar one and knows that if he’s pulled upwards now, the fastening is bound to give halfway. But at last he’s free and watches the empty harness jerking back up to the helicopter.

  The noise of the rotors is too loud for conversation, so they all stand staring upwards. No one wants to be on the receiving end of the next consignment to be lowered. From what Helgi could gather before they boarded, the plan is to renew the lighthouse radio transmitter, replace a broken solar panel and touch up the exterior paintwork. They’re also going to measure the area around the helipad and gauge the potential for enlarging and strengthening it to make it fit for purpose again. How this is to be done without loss of life is a mystery to Helgi. The platform is built on a foundation of stone and in order to assess the terrain around it, someone will have to climb down and cling by his toes if he is to find a foothold on the sharp, wind-eroded snags. Helgi hopes fervently that no one will ask him to help.

  Together they labour to free each consignment as it is lowered, then push it aside so it won’t get in the way of the next. Helgi can no longer feel his arms by the time the co-pilot finally winches down to signal that the drop is complete. He is nonchalant on the descent, smiling and waving at them. His breeziness in no way abates once he has landed.

  ‘That’s the lot, then!’ the man bellows and Helgi can’t help wondering if he ever accidentally yells at his wife like that at the end of a day’s work. ‘You’re all sorted, aren’t you?’ Helgi nods, awkwardly, and the others follow suit. ‘The forecast’s good so we assume we’ll be picking you up tomorrow evening unless we hear from you first. You’ve got double rations, so if you think you’ll need to spend another night, just let us know. Be careful and, you know, try not to get agoraphobia.’ The man grins, revealing teeth as white as his helmet. ‘And no going for an early-morning jog. It could end nastily.’ Still smiling, he signals to the pilot to winch him up and shortly afterwards pops his head out to wave goodbye. The door closes, the helicopter tilts slightly, then describes a swift arc away from them. As it recedes into the distance, the thunder of the rotors fades until finally they can no longer hear it.

  They look at each other self-consciously and no one says anything. It is Helgi’s acquaintance Ívar who finally makes a move, muttering that they had better stow the gear. The younger man follows him. They search among the small piles on the platform until they find what they’re looking for and break open some boxes. Both seem completely unaffected by vertigo, though to Helgi it looks as if they are stepping dangerously close to the edge and it wouldn’t take much to lose one’s footing on the
rough concrete. He considers making another attempt to talk to the two men, but decides against it. Ívar was reluctant to speak to him at the airport; he doesn’t seem to remember him, which isn’t really that surprising. A few days ago Helgi had struck up a conversation with him in a bar that seemed mainly to attract lonely, friendless types like himself, plus the odd tourist who appeared horrified at the idea that this might be the fabled Icelandic nightlife.

  Ívar had been pretty wasted, bragging about a perilous trip he was about to make. After letting him ramble on for a while, Helgi asked if there was any chance he might be allowed to go along to take pictures. Ívar had thumped him on the back, so hard it hurt, and said it might well be possible. Helgi seemed like a good bloke and he would be glad of the company. Helgi should just ring and ask the coastguard, making sure to mention that Ívar was OK with it. Which he had done.

  He watches the men laying aside tools in a neat row. They work in silence, having no apparent need for words. Both clearly know what they’re doing and their movements are practised and confident. Helgi thanks his lucky stars he doesn’t have to participate in the repairs to the lighthouse or measurements of the helipad. He finds it hard to imagine how there can be any room for manoeuvre in these confined conditions and is sure any activity must be extremely dangerous, whatever security measures are taken. He’d be only too happy to stay out of the way – the only condition for his being permitted to go along – but easy as it was to make such a promise, he sees now that it will be almost impossible to aim the camera without bumping into his companions while they work. If he can ever actually summon up the courage to make the move from the helipad to the lighthouse, that is.

  It’s hardly any distance but that doesn’t make it any less daunting. Involuntarily Helgi grabs hold of a pile of equipment to combat his dizziness. Out of the corner of his eye he catches sight of the young woman who is also searching for something to hold on to, and feels ashamed of himself for not being a proper man like the others. To mask his embarrassment, he starts taking photos completely at random until the men seem to have finished their task.

  Gingerly he inches after them as they stride, sure-footed, over to the lighthouse. He is aware of the woman behind him but doesn’t dare look round. A rattle of loose gravel and unnaturally rapid breathing indicate that she is following close on his heels. He concentrates on the lighthouse, which looks so small you would have thought it had been built for one of Snow White’s seven dwarfs. Once there, he heaves a sigh of relief and presses himself against the rough wall. The woman stations herself beside him, her cheeks ruddy, her eyes betraying a hint of anxiety, as if she has been brought here against her will – or her better judgement. She’s kitted out like a veteran, in drab green outdoor gear, designed with an eye to protecting her from the cold rather than enhancing her feminine charms. But the clothes are brand new and she looks about as pleased to be there as him.

  Helgi opens his mouth to offer comfort, partly as a means of bolstering his own courage, but can’t find the right words. Together they gaze in silence at the view from the rock, at the heaving, glittering surface of the sea and almost cloudless vault of the sky. Helgi shoots a glance at the woman whose name, he now remembers, is Heida. He guesses that she is the technician who has been sent, in a last-minute decision, to update the radio transmitter and GPS equipment in the lighthouse. Tóti, the man with Ívar, must be the other carpenter, as no manual worker would have long pink nails like Heida’s.

  Ívar sticks his head inside the lighthouse, turns and looks at Heida and Helgi for a moment then climbs onto the step in front of the door and stamps imaginary dirt off his shoes. Tóti follows on his heels. Ívar puts his hands on his hips and sighs, then shoves a knife in the leather sheath attached to his belt. Helgi regrets not having brought along his hunting knife to fit in better.

  ‘Right,’ says Ívar. ‘No point hanging about. There’s no time to lose if we’re going to finish by tomorrow evening.’

  Slowly Helgi detaches himself from the wall and feels as if he’s reeling. ‘If you like, I might be able to help. I won’t be taking pictures all the time.’

  The men barely react, though Ívar mutters that he’ll bear it in mind. They enter the lighthouse and Heida follows, but the space is so tiny that one person is forced to stand in the doorway. Helgi allows his rapid heartbeat to slow as he listens to the sound of their voices inside. This is incredible. Here he is, standing on a pillar of rock hardly any bigger in area than his flat, surrounded on all sides by the freezing ocean, which seems to be just waiting for one of them to lose their footing. This is no place for a human being to spend an hour, let alone the whole night.

  His thoughts return to his dream and although he can remember little about it, he’s pretty sure his imagination fell far short of the reality. He tries to pick out the helicopter on the horizon but it has gone. There’s nothing to see for the moment, so he moves slowly over to join the others, clinging onto the wall all the while, and peers in through the doorway over Tóti’s shoulder.

  Inside, Heida and Ívar are bending over something he can’t see. But his attention is drawn not to the people but to the whitewashed walls of this tiny space. More snatches of his dream flash into his mind. Whitewashed concrete, spattered all over with blood. Shiny black pools on a stone floor. All of a sudden he remembers how the dream ended.

  There were four people to begin with.

  Two returned to land.

  It’s a pity he can’t remember if he was one of them.

  Chapter 2

  20 January 2014

  Few people had any business down in the bowels of the police station. Because of its low ceiling the windowless basement was used solely for storage, not for stuff that was needed but for useless things that no one could decide whether to throw away. Nína switched on the light and one fluorescent tube after another clicked and flickered to life as she descended the stairs. As a rule only the caretaker came down here, but a faint smell of cigarette smoke suggested that other employees used it on occasion. Nína wrinkled her nose and sighed. She would get used to the stale fug; it wasn’t the worst thing she’d smelt in the line of duty. She surveyed the assorted junk that covered the floor, then picked her way through it along the zigzagging path created by the caretaker. She pitied the poor man having to sift through this worthless rubbish in preparation for the force’s move to a new, more modern headquarters. But it wasn’t all junk; somewhere in here lurked filing cabinets crammed with documents that Nína’s superiors felt it would be more appropriate for a police officer to empty. The information they contained might still be sensitive.

  Dust danced in the air, refusing to settle. Nína rubbed her nose. The silence was total; she couldn’t hear the faintest echo of the roar of traffic from Hverfisgata and Hlemmur Square, which constantly got on her nerves upstairs. Extraordinary how much difference a single layer of concrete could make. Down here it was like entering another world, far from noisy distractions and the light of day. She shrugged off her initial disgust at the stale air, pushing away the memory of all those recent newspaper articles about the dangers of mould spores. Not that she was particularly worried about her health. She didn’t really care about anything these days. Lately she had gone about her work like an automaton, doing only what was strictly necessary. Her colleagues treated her as if she were made of porcelain or else a hand grenade primed to go off, and her boss seemed incapable of dealing with the situation. That probably explained why she was down here in the basement. He couldn’t send Nína back out on the beat because of the furore that had broken out at the station when she’d lodged a formal complaint about the conduct of a colleague – although such matters were supposed to be handled in the strictest confidence.

  They had received a report of a disturbance and possible domestic at a block of flats in the east end of town. Nína had been sent with another officer to restore the peace and arrest the troublemaker if it turned out he had beaten up his wife badly enough for her to pr
ess charges. On the way there her fellow officer had been grumbling about a recent report that had revealed the shitty conditions endured by policewomen and the prejudice they experienced from male members of the force. Nína had stood up for her female colleagues; after all, she had firsthand experience of the problem. Women still made up a small minority in the police but apparently even that was too much for some of the men. Her male colleague had tried to argue that men were better at the job than women and started regaling her with exactly the kind of bigotry the survey had exposed. It was a pity, really, that they had wasted their money on research when speaking to him would have told them all they needed to know.

  Nína had refrained from comment during most of his rant but her patience snapped when he started using chess to prove his point. She asked if he was really that expert at the noble game himself. Extrapolating from the genius of Russian grandmasters wouldn’t wash. If chess was a standard of male intelligence, then he and his fellow officers in the police must be singularly unrepresentative; at least, the less-than-enthusiastic participation in the Christmas chess tournament hadn’t pointed to the existence of many grandmasters on the force. This and more in the same vein accompanied their progress up the stairs and by the time the door was opened in response to their banging, they were both red in the face and fuming.

  The man standing in the doorway didn’t look like much of a chess player. Behind him they could hear his wife whimpering. The flat stank of alcohol and old cigarette smoke. The man let them in as if nothing had happened, as if beating up your wife was standard practice. Nína followed the noise to where his wife was curled up weeping. When she looked up, the crimson mark of a blow was visible on one cheek and her face was streaked with mascara. Her top was torn, revealing a red lace bra, and when she loosened her arms from round her knees, it was apparent that her trousers had been dragged down to her pubic bone. The flies hadn’t been undone and the skin around her jutting hipbones was badly grazed.