The Undesired Read online

  ‘No, maybe not.’ Ódinn forced a polite smile. ‘Are you Lilja?’

  Ignoring his question, the woman went on: ‘This godforsaken nation’s been forced to grovel in the dust.’ She regarded him with displeasure.

  ‘I wouldn’t say that.’ There was a clatter of plates from the corridor. They were clearing away lunch. On his way here, Ódinn had been forced to squeeze past a cumbersome metal trolley on which the staff were loading trays of leftovers. He doubted he would have done any better at finishing the muck on offer. ‘My name’s Ódinn and I’m working on a report about the management of the care home at Krókur.’

  ‘I know. What happened to the woman?’

  ‘Woman?’

  ‘The woman who came here. She said she was writing a report too. Is everybody at it?’

  ‘It was passed on to me after Róberta died.’

  The woman seemed unaffected by the news. Death must seem awfully mundane in a place like this; nothing to make a fuss about. ‘I’d rather talk to a man anyway, so it makes no odds. Just don’t ask the same questions, will you? It’s so boring.’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s bound to be some repetition, but please try not to let it get on your nerves.’

  The woman snorted. ‘What a bunch of amateurs you are. Pathetic.’

  Ódinn drew up a heavy chair, part of the institutional three-piece suite, and placed it facing the woman. He didn’t dare turn her wheelchair for fear of how she’d react. He sat down and took out his papers. ‘I don’t know if you followed the discussion in the media at all – about Breidavík and the other care homes?’

  ‘A bloody waste of time.’ The woman turned away and gazed out of the window again, her head jerking as if there were a malfunction in her operating system. He assumed she didn’t dare meet his eye – due to a guilty conscience perhaps – but revised his opinion when she added acidly: ‘It’s a disgrace how they dealt with those places, and now anyone can guess what’s going to happen: some state lackey’s going to earn himself a knighthood by slandering me and Veigar, even though he’s no longer here to defend himself. Anyone can see the whole thing’s a travesty. And you and your sort will wallow in it at our expense, on the radio and in the press, though it’s all rubbish. Well, good luck to you. That’s all I say. Just remember that on the Day of Judgement you’ll be weighed on the scales of justice and found wanting.’

  ‘But we’ve no intention of looking for scapegoats,’ he told her. ‘This is simply part of the general inquiry into the state’s treatment of children over a period during which you and your husband were running Krókur. We’ve no intention of destroying your reputation. I’ve come here to give you a chance to tell me your side of the story. Naturally, we’re all hoping the investigation will demonstrate that everything was above board.’ He omitted to add that he very much doubted anything she said would change his mind.

  ‘And just how were homes like that supposed to be run?’ She turned back to him, and her head carried on wobbling for a moment or two.

  God, she was getting on his nerves. Ódinn felt a strong urge to pitch her off the balcony, then pulled himself together. All he’d been able to think about since yesterday evening was his possible role in Lára’s accident. ‘I suppose what we’re hoping is to find that the children were treated with respect and compassion.’

  ‘Pathetic. All of them.’ He didn’t know if she meant him and his fellow investigators, or the boys at Krókur. It amounted to the same thing. She was a lone voice in the wilderness; the only person left to answer for the past conduct of herself and her husband, and others in the system. Still, as long as she answered his questions, he didn’t care if she got upset.

  ‘I’d like to discuss a few points relating to Krókur. I appreciate that Veigar’s no longer here to answer for himself, and I’m not sure how many former staff members we’ll be able to interview. I’ve dug up a few names but not many are still alive; most of them seem to have been a bit older than you and your husband.’ The cardboard box he and Diljá had found in Róberta’s garage had contained payroll records, but the list of employees Ódinn had managed to scrape together from this information was strangely short, and he suspected there were names missing. A phone call to the National Register had established that only three were still alive. ‘I was actually hoping that the list I have would turn out to be incomplete. How many people worked for you during those four years?’

  ‘Can’t remember. There was a quick turnover.’

  ‘Ten? Twenty? Thirty?’ The list he’d drawn up contained only twelve names.

  With an effort the woman held up her hands and counted on her fingers, muttering under her breath. Then she replaced them on the arms of her wheelchair, looking rather pleased with herself. ‘Fifteen. Or thereabouts. I haven’t lost my memory, you know, though I have a bit of trouble with names.’ The index finger she raised to tap her papery brow had swollen joints and a yellowing nail.

  ‘Do you think you’d be able to remember who’s missing if I read out the names I have so far?’

  ‘What a stupid question. How on earth can I know in advance? Just read out the names and we’ll see.’

  Gritting his teeth, Ódinn started reading. The woman put her head on one side. Her lower jaw sagged as he read until finally her mouth hung open as if she had stiffened up on the point of speaking. She closed her eyes and nodded at certain names, but didn’t say a word until he’d finished the list. ‘I don’t know if anyone’s missing. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard some of those names. Are you sure they all worked at Krókur?’

  Ódinn said they did, as far as he could ascertain.

  ‘There’s someone missing.’ The elderly face wrinkled in a frown. ‘That useless girl.’

  ‘Useless girl?’ The list had contained only men’s names. ‘You don’t happen to remember what she was called?’

  ‘No. I told you – I’m getting a bit rusty when it comes to names. She was a dreadful little slut.’

  ‘That doesn’t help much.’ His attempts to jog Lilja’s memory failed and all he got for his pains was further abuse of former staff. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of asking why she’d called the girl a slut, so in the end he gave up and changed the subject.

  He moved on to questions about the boys’ treatment: how they had occupied their time, what they had been given to eat and how their other needs had been met. The woman continued to answer sarcastically, though he did manage to extract some basic information. According to her, appropriate punishments had been meted out as necessary, and, after a lot of beating about the bush, he established that the boys had been subjected to both physical and mental punishment, including being locked in dark rooms or made to clean the toilets. By now Ódinn had a bad taste in his mouth. As a boy he’d been guilty of his fair share of misdemeanours and his parents had disciplined him. But, despite being pretty angry at times, they’d never laid a finger on him or his brother, or subjected them to any kind of humiliation. Instead he and Baldur had received countless scoldings and been grounded until they mended their ways. He wouldn’t have liked to experience the sort of discipline Lilja was describing. And it would have been harder still to have suffered it at the hands of people who weren’t family members; to receive no sympathy, no love or warmth, to have no one to comfort you.

  ‘I gather the business was only just breaking even. Is that why you sold the property?’ He phrased it as tactfully as he could. The home seemed to have been on a fast track to bankruptcy, and money worries don’t tend to bring out the best in people. Perhaps that explained the couple’s harsh behaviour, as described by the old boys.

  ‘What nonsense.’ The woman regarded him in disgust. ‘Only just breaking even! I’ve never heard the like.’

  ‘Then why did you close down?’

  For the first time since Ódinn had sat down, the woman was flustered. ‘Veigar was offered a very good job in town. In the public sector. We sold the property and the buyer wanted to run it as a farm. He didn�
��t want to take on the home, so the boys were transferred. Or sent back to their families.’

  ‘So you weren’t closed down?’

  ‘Closed down?’ Lilja’s head began to wobble again. ‘Is that what you thought? That the management wasn’t satisfactory and we were forced to close? Quite the opposite. They begged us to carry on but we’d had enough. We wanted to move back to town and we never regretted it.’

  ‘I see. I thought the death of the two boys might have played a part. The authorities must have taken a pretty dim view of it.’

  ‘Good riddance. The older boy, anyway, though the other was a sad little thing – one of the better ones.’

  Ódinn busied himself with his papers so the woman wouldn’t see the contempt in his eyes. Was she completely devoid of feeling or was it an act – an old woman’s defiance towards a system that had turned against her? The four former inmates he had talked to had described the couple as utterly callous, but it was hard to know how much faith to put in their testimony. ‘How did it happen? Is there any reason to believe that you or Veigar could have prevented it?’

  ‘You’re worse than the woman who came before.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘She asked quite different questions.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘She kept asking about the boy who died, the older one. What was he called again?’

  ‘His name was Einar. Einar Allen.’

  ‘Foreign blood. I’d forgotten that. No doubt that had something to do with it.’

  ‘I see. What did Róberta want to know about him?’

  ‘She asked so many questions. I can’t remember exactly what.’ Lilja’s eyes dropped and her whole body seemed to slump. ‘Some people are given everything on a plate but offer nothing but ingratitude in return, and do the unforgivable. Others knuckle down, and pray, but no doors are opened for them and they never receive anything. God tests us in mysterious ways. Sometimes His purpose is impossible to understand.’

  Ódinn drew a deep breath. He couldn’t make head or tail of this. She could hardly be alluding to Einar. He was the son of a single mother and most unlikely to have received everything on a plate. She couldn’t mean Róberta either. ‘Do you have e-mail?’ The question was absurd in the circumstances but he had to know. Lilja seemed exactly the type to send threatening messages. And she had more to gain than anyone else from having the inquiry shelved. In fact, she was the only person with any interests to protect.

  ‘E-mail? No, mister. I don’t have a computer; never have. Why should I get e-mail? I hardly get any letters any more. I don’t think I even have a postal address.’

  ‘Then can you think of anyone else who might want this investigation stopped?’

  ‘The instrument of justice.’

  ‘Instrument of justice?’

  ‘Yes. God would want to put a stop to it. And there’s me. Can’t think of anyone else. Like I said, they’re all pathetic.’

  Lilja reared up in the wheelchair and one of her feet slid off onto the floor, revealing a thick, dark-brown nylon stocking. Over the years her calf seemed to have sunk down over her ankle. Ódinn looked away. ‘No one else?’ She didn’t respond, so he brought the conversation back to the two boys. ‘You didn’t answer my question about Einar and Thorbjörn’s deaths. Could you go over what happened?’

  ‘One deserved it; the other got mixed up in it by mistake.’

  ‘You mean it wasn’t an accident?’

  ‘Nothing happens by accident. God decides everything. And his ways are inscrutable.’

  ‘What happened?’ Although no atheist, Ódinn found it uncomfortable to have God casually dropped into the conversation like this. ‘Leaving God out of it.’

  ‘They slipped out late one evening. Veigar suspected someone was wandering around at night but thought it was the girl. The little slut. We didn’t realise it was Eyjalín. Her letters were so crazy that we didn’t take them seriously. Thought she was disturbed, delusional. Which she was. But she wasn’t the only one prowling about at night, as it turned out. Einar and the little boy should have been in their rooms the evening they died.’

  ‘Were the boys free to go out at night? Weren’t they monitored?’

  ‘Are you joking? Do you think we were made of money? We used to lock them in but they’d loosened the bars in the window. Veigar discovered that afterwards when he went over the place with the police. They’d propped them up so it wouldn’t show. Except maybe when the window was cleaned. But that tramp of a girl didn’t report it. She was sacked afterwards anyway.’

  ‘So they broke out. But why? What were they doing in the car and why was the engine running? Where did they get the keys from?’

  ‘I don’t have all the answers, if that’s what you think. The keys were in the ignition. Veigar always left them there. There were only Icelanders in Iceland in those days. They don’t steal other people’s cars.’ Ódinn opened his mouth to object but stopped himself. The woman was incorrigible. She went on: ‘Maybe they were planning to run away, to drive to town. Or just keep warm. No one knows, and anyway it’s not important. The snow had drifted over the exhaust pipe so the fumes filled the car. And they suffocated.’ She scowled at Ódinn. ‘They were discovered lying on the floor in the back. Blue in the face. As if they were asleep.’ Ódinn thought this was hardly consistent with the idea that they had intended to drive into town, or they would surely have been found in the front seats.

  ‘I’ve heard rumours that it wasn’t snow that blocked the exhaust pipe but a rag. Is there any truth in that?’

  The woman’s head trembled more than ever and she had difficulty meeting Ódinn’s eye. ‘No. No, no and no.’

  He didn’t believe her. But however hard he tried to coax the story out of her, she flatly denied everything.

  He sensed she was growing tired. She was hunched in her chair and her voice had grown hoarse. ‘One more thing. Did Róberta ever ask you about this Eyjalín girl that you mentioned? The file contains letters from her, which Róberta may have had a special interest in.’

  Lilja was so weak by now that she could hardly speak. ‘Some people are given everything but throw it away. Others have to make do with wanting, wanting, wanting.’ Ódinn tried unsuccessfully to elicit something more detailed or concrete. Finally, he rose to his feet, said goodbye and told her he’d send a member of staff to fetch her. In the corridor he met the same nurse as before but this time she seemed a little less busy.

  ‘How did it go?’ She smiled sympathetically. ‘She’s not the easiest of people. Snappish in the daytime and spends the nights screaming for a child that no one knows anything about. If we weren’t under such pressure to use every bed, we’d give her a room to herself. But it can’t be helped.’ She walked off down the corridor and Ódinn returned to the land of the living, but just as he reached the entrance the nurse came running after him. ‘She wants to tell you something. Do you have a second to pop back and see her?’

  Eager as he was to get out into the fresh air, he decided he might as well.

  ‘I remembered her name. That useless girl.’ The watery blue eyes were fixed on Ódinn. ‘She was called Aldís.’

  ‘Aldís?’ Ódinn felt an overpowering need to cough but managed to suppress it. ‘You don’t happen to remember her second name?’

  ‘Aldís Anna Agnarsdóttir. Three “A”s in a row. That’s how I remembered.’

  Ódinn nodded and left without saying goodbye. He couldn’t speak. He knew Aldís Anna Agnarsdóttir only too well.

  Chapter 27

  February 1974

  Instinctively Aldís blew out the candle, and everything went black. She had no wish to meet any member of the household at this moment, whoever it was, and for that darkness was her best friend. She perched on the steps, listening to the footfalls approaching overhead. Her heart was thudding, her breathing rapid. Suddenly it dawned on her that if the cellar light were turned on she would be a sitting duck. She fumbled in her pocket for the matches to lig
ht her way to a better hiding place, then changed her mind. The person might not be coming down here, and the candle would only give her away. Even the dim light of its smoking flame might be visible in the cracks around the trapdoor. But, on the other hand, if she stumbled around blindly among all the junk, she might knock something over.

  As she delved in her pocket her hand encountered a sweet-wrapper and the rustling sounded unbearably loud, as did the hissing of the match a moment later. The candlelight seemed far too bright now. She eased herself to her feet, wondering what to do about the box on the steps. If whoever it was looked down into the cellar and saw it, they might realise there was somebody there. But if she tried to move the box, the noise would be audible upstairs. Deciding to leave it where it was, she made do with closing it with extreme care.

  The stench of mildew seemed suddenly stronger. The candle threw flickering shadows around the cellar. Aldís peered round frantically for a hiding place. She could try to duck behind a tyre or box or pile of planks, but would probably be instantly visible to anyone walking past. The hope of finding a refuge faded the further into the cellar she crept, but finally she caught sight of a small door at the very back. The footsteps and creaking overhead indicated that the person was standing directly over the entrance to the cellar now, so she made for the little door without stopping to think what she’d do if it was locked. She bit her lip and tasted blood as she grabbed the handle, but, to her intense relief, the door opened. The iron taste and stinging in her lip revived her and, in spite of her panic, she managed to slip inside and close the door noiselessly behind her. She blew out the candle and closed her eyes. Better to imagine she was surrounded by light than enclosed in a pitch-black cubbyhole, awaiting her fate.

  She didn’t dare move a muscle since she hadn’t given herself time to register the contents of the storeroom before extinguishing the candle. For all she knew, it might be full of jam-jars that would topple over with a crash if she touched them. So she crouched motionless, ears pricked for sounds of the unknown person. Funny how she always felt like praying when she was in a tight corner. Normally she gave little thought to God but it was good to have Him to turn to when all else failed. Though it seemed a bit cheeky to expect the Almighty to wait in readiness for an SOS from her, like a first-aid box that sat gathering dust until there was an accident – at which point it transpired that someone had forgotten to replenish the contents.