The Legacy Read online

  There was a fierce gust of wind as Helgi turned in the doorway to call goodbye to his wife. Védís wasn’t due in until ten today; she taught Danish and the school probably didn’t think it reasonable to expect sixth-formers to grapple with grammar at the crack of dawn on a Friday. The door slammed before she could answer, and anyway Helgi didn’t have time to wait for her to shuffle out in her slippers to kiss him goodbye. He clutched the bundle of papers to him as he dashed to the car, and breathed easier once he was inside, the documents safely deposited on the passenger seat. If the traffic was no worse than usual, he should just make it.

  The engine emitted its friendly purr and he relaxed as the wheels began to turn. He was going to get away with it. But no sooner had he left his drive than he had to slam on the brakes: Stefán and Bárdur, the little boys from next door, were standing in the middle of the road. Leaning forwards, Helgi noticed that they were barefoot and wearing their pyjamas. The temperature was freezing and there was a vicious wind. What were their parents thinking? The boys stood there apparently at a loss, huddled together, staring at him helplessly. This must be some kind of bad joke. He couldn’t be this unlucky. Not today. He glanced over at his neighbours’ house in the faint hope of seeing Sigvaldi or Elísa come running out, but the front door was closed and there was no sign of life. Their cars were parked in the drive, so they must be home. Perhaps they’d had a bad night too and overslept.

  Helgi considered easing the car carefully around the children and continuing on his way. He could ring Védís afterwards and ask her to check what was going on; claim he thought he’d spotted the boys in the rear-view mirror but wasn’t sure. Suddenly the younger boy began to howl. Hell. He couldn’t drive away from a weeping kid. Could he? The meeting mattered more than he cared to admit. Business had been going through a bad patch recently and it was clear there would be redundancies if they couldn’t attract new, more promising clients. If he messed up this bid, it was obvious who would be first for the chop.

  Swinging the wheel to the right, he drove off as slowly as he could. As he eased the car past the brothers they stood and gaped. The younger boy was so incredulous he paused in his howling. They were still young enough to be under the illusion that all grown-ups were good. Except the bad guys, of course, but then the bad guys didn’t look ordinary like their neighbour. They had a lot to learn.

  Once Helgi was safely past the boys he put his foot down and simultaneously rang his wife.

  The police officer obviously wasn’t having the best of days. He kept sighing heavily, though he was no longer young and must have witnessed his share of grim sights over the years. The broken veins that spread in a thick band from his nose across his cheeks made it appear as if he was blushing. He and his partner had been first on the scene after the notification had come in from a woman saying she was stuck with her neighbours’ children and needed help restoring them to their parents. It had sounded like a job for no more than a couple of officers. There was every reason to believe the parents had overslept and the little wretches had locked themselves out. But this had turned out to be far from the truth, as the officer was attempting to explain to the detectives. His partner, a rookie in his first month on the force, had been sent back to the station. The garden path still stank of his vomit.

  ‘The woman in question escorted the boys round to the property and proceeded to ring the bell several times and knock on the door. She could hear the bell inside but assumed the ringing was too weak to rouse their parents. She was sure they must be asleep because their vehicles were parked outside.’ The policeman rested his hands on his heavy hips and shook his head. ‘Sadly that wasn’t the case. The boys knew nothing; they said they’d woken up to find themselves locked in their room. When they realised no one was going to open the door, they climbed out of the window.’

  ‘Go on.’ The detective, Huldar, stood as far away from the older officer as he could in the narrow hall, without making it too obvious. The gusts of hot air created by the man’s constant huffing and sighing gave the impression that he had breakfasted on garlic and little else. Huldar would have opened a window were it not necessary to seal off the scene. It wouldn’t help much anyway: the younger officer had disgraced himself just outside.

  Through the glass Huldar watched his partner and closest colleague Ríkhardur repeatedly raising a hand to his nose as if he wanted to pinch it shut but knew it was against the unwritten rules. He was wise to resist the temptation; his detractors on the force didn’t need any more ammunition against him. Huldar watched him pick his way painstakingly along the withered hedge, prodding with a pole in search of evidence, and wondered yet again why the man had ever joined the police.

  Ríkhardur belonged in some government ministry, not halfway under a bush at a crime scene. His elegant suit and overlong coat were completely out of place. He could just about get away with his sartorial style at the station, but only just. The same applied to the immaculate haircut that was never permitted to grow out, and his perfectly manicured hands. Of course a certain standard of neatness was encouraged at the station – they were not permitted to dye their hair or beards bright orange, for example – but Ríkhardur went a step further than required. The fault of his upbringing, no doubt. Both his parents were judges and he had completed all but the final year of a law degree when he underwent a change of heart and enrolled at the police training college instead. He explained that he had needed a break but had every intention of finishing his legal studies eventually. That seemed unlikely to happen any time soon. Ríkhardur showed no signs of quitting, despite the endless sidelong glances he had to endure and the hard time he had coping with all the ugliness that went with the job.

  In circumstances like the present he invariably opted to perform the tasks that would take him furthest away from any gruesome sights, which was why he was now busy combing the garden, inadequately dressed for the cold. Huldar wouldn’t be surprised to see him pull out a wet-wipe any moment to clean off the dirt.

  Lately, though, Ríkhardur’s standards had been slipping. This morning, for instance, he had come to work with a tiny scrap of loo paper on his neck. Huldar couldn’t help raising his eyebrows, though he wouldn’t have turned a hair if anyone else had cut himself shaving.

  The mess in Ríkhardur’s private life was evidently taking its toll. His wife had left him, shortly after suffering her third miscarriage, and their perfect marriage was in ruins. A blow like that would affect anyone, of course. Perhaps Ríkhardur had reached the end of his tether and cracks would begin to appear in the flawless surface. But that was unlikely. He had weathered a number of storms in his personal life without breaking down and this would probably be no different. Three times he had proudly announced to his colleagues that he was going to be a father; three times he had subsequently whispered to Huldar that his wife had lost the baby. On two of the occasions Huldar had felt sorry for him. The third time he had experienced pure relief.

  Huldar watched Ríkhardur pause to clean some leaves from his shoes with the pole. A picture of Ríkhardur’s equally perfect ex-wife sprang unbidden to Huldar’s mind and he flushed slightly as he turned back to the uniformed officer with the foul breath.

  ‘After speaking to the woman next door, we went round to the property and attempted to rouse the occupants. No one answered the bell and we were unable to hear any sounds from inside. While Dóri waited by the door, I made a circuit of the property, looking in the windows where the curtains were open. I didn’t observe anything untoward – or any people either. The curtains were drawn in the couple’s bedroom, so I couldn’t rule out the possibility that they were sound asleep inside. But I began to have my doubts when banging on the glass had no effect. I could see where the boys had climbed out of their room. Their window was still open but there was no way Dóri or I could squeeze inside.’

  ‘I see.’ Huldar didn’t look up from his notebook. ‘What then?’

  The older man frowned, trying to be sure that he had the sequen
ce of events right. ‘We rang the two mobile phones registered at this address as there doesn’t appear to be a landline. One was listed as belonging to Elísa Bjarnadóttir and the other to her husband, Sigvaldi Freysteinsson. Neither answered. Sigvaldi’s went straight to voicemail but Elísa’s just kept ringing. I tried phoning again but couldn’t hear any ringtone through the bedroom window. At this point I became concerned, because you would usually expect people to be in the same place as their phones, wouldn’t you?’ Huldar didn’t dignify this with a reply, so the man went on: ‘My main thought was that one of the cars must have broken down and that either the husband or the wife had gone to work by taxi and the other had stayed behind and overslept. All I could think of was that the battery must have run out in the phone of whoever was at home, so their alarm hadn’t gone off. Either that or something must have happened to him or her and maybe to the phone too. Slipped over in the shower with the phone in their hand, that sort of thing.’

  ‘I see.’ Huldar was lying: who would take their phone into the shower? And why didn’t the woman’s voicemail kick in if her phone had run out of juice or was broken?

  ‘The neighbour had mentioned a daughter who should be in the house as well, so I began to think maybe she’d gone in the taxi too – to school.’ The girl wasn’t in the house; her bed was empty and although they had called her name repeatedly, they had received no reply. When a call to her school confirmed that she had not gone in that morning, a search was ordered. Some of the officers called to the scene were now combing the neighbourhood in case she had wandered off like her brothers. They could only hope that this would prove to be the case. Huldar didn’t like to think of the alternatives.

  The policeman resumed his account. ‘The more we banged on the doors and windows, the more likely it seemed to me that whoever was inside must be unconscious. I was increasingly inclined to believe that the girl and one of the parents had gone off somewhere and that something had happened to the parent left at home. It was hard to credit that anyone could sleep through the racket we were making. It just didn’t seem possible.’

  ‘Was that when you decided to force an entry?’

  ‘Yes. I made the decision to act. By that point I suspected that one of the parents must be lying unconscious inside, or worse. I’d even begun to suspect suicide. But not this.’

  The man heaved another sigh, emitting a blast of garlic that caused Huldar to lean backwards. He was tempted to offer the man some of the nicotine gum he carried everywhere these days in a bid to quit smoking. ‘No. No one could have anticipated this.’ He couldn’t be bothered to reprimand the officer for failing to ring the couple’s workplaces before leaping to conclusions. One call to the National Hospital would have established that the husband was abroad at a conference. Then the search for the little girl could have started sooner.

  ‘I returned to the neighbour’s house while Dóri was waiting for the locksmith. The woman seemed more curious than worried – she kept grilling me. I managed to fob her off and didn’t mention what I was afraid of because the little boys were in the kitchen having their breakfast.’ He described how the boys had stared at him with big eyes over their cereal bowls and how bewildered they had looked later when they were driven away in a police car. He could cheerfully have punched the woman when she fuelled the boys’ fears by pursuing them out to the car, demanding to know what was going on. In the end they had managed to shoo her back indoors. Now she was glued to the sitting-room window. No doubt the sight of Ríkhardur would confuse her since no one would take him for a policeman.

  ‘After the locksmith had finished, I tried calling out again before entering but received no answer. I knocked on the door to the hallway as it was closed, like the door to the couple’s bedroom.’

  ‘Were you wearing gloves?’

  The colour deepened in the man’s cheeks. ‘No.’ In his defence, at least he didn’t try to make excuses.

  ‘I’m assuming we have your fingerprints on record? And your partner Dóri’s too?’

  ‘Yes. Well, mine, at any rate. I can’t answer for Dóri. They should have been taken when he joined the force.’

  ‘Right.’ Huldar looked up from his notebook. ‘What did you two do after you’d opened the door and seen what was inside? Did you touch anything?’

  The man shook his head. ‘No. Dóri put his hand over his mouth and ran out. I went over to the woman to check if she was still alive, though I was fairly certain she couldn’t be. While I was doing that I rang the station to notify them.’

  ‘Did you check her pulse?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘On her neck. I couldn’t find one. She felt cold to the touch too, so I assumed she was dead. It wasn’t really possible to come to any other conclusion. I didn’t need to check her pulse but I did it out of habit. Just in case.’

  ‘Did you touch her anywhere else?’

  The man reddened again, the flush spreading down into his collar. ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’d better go in and show the pathologist exactly what you did. He’ll be checking the body for fingerprints.’ Huldar snapped his notebook shut. ‘Come with me.’

  They entered the master bedroom together. The smell that hit them in the doorway was so bad that Huldar almost missed the garlic.

  Elísa was lying across the double bed. Her head was wound like a mummy in duct tape which obscured her eyes, nose and mouth. Only the upper part of her forehead was visible and the hair sticking up wildly above it. Most disturbing of all, though, was what had happened to her mouth. The metal tube of the vacuum cleaner had been forced down her throat and secured with more tape. The hose snaked down to the vacuum cleaner itself on the floor by the bed. No wonder the rookie officer had gagged and fled.

  It was all too plain that the woman’s end had been far from easy. In the circumstances it was a mercy that so little of her face could be seen. The grimace of agony concealed by the wide strips of shiny silver tape must be truly horrifying.

  The pathologist was bending over the woman. He had just arrived and hadn’t yet put on the outfit he usually wore on such occasions. His assistant was standing in one corner, screwing a lens into a camera.

  The pathologist shook his head. ‘This doesn’t look good.’

  ‘No.’ Huldar had nothing to add. He moved further inside to reveal the police officer behind him in the doorway. ‘This guy was first on the scene. His prints’ll be all over the victim’s neck. Would you like him to show you where he touched her?’

  ‘No. Not now. I don’t want anyone else in here while we’re conducting the preliminary examination. It’ll have to wait. You’d better go back into the passage yourself.’

  Huldar obeyed with alacrity, cursing himself for his thoughtlessness. He was no better than the old beat cop, though at least his breath wasn’t as rank. While the pathologist was pulling on his protective suit, his assistant began photographing Elísa from all angles. The flash dazzled them until their eyes grew used to it. Once he had finished with the victim, the photographer turned his attention to the rest of the room, including the walls and floor. He disappeared from view as he bent down to take pictures under the bed, only to leap to his feet, white as a sheet. ‘Shit!’ He gesticulated downwards. ‘There’s a child under there.’

  Forgetting the pathologist’s orders, Huldar charged into the room. He tore aside the white valance and peered under the bed. A small girl in a nightie was lying huddled in a ball underneath, eyes shut tight, chin buried in her chest, hands clamped over her ears. To Huldar’s intense relief the thin body moved. This must be Elísa’s and Sigvaldi’s daughter; the girl they were currently scouring the neighbourhood for. They hadn’t searched the room yet for fear of compromising the crime-scene investigation. It simply hadn’t occurred to anyone that the child might not emerge from hiding when her name was called and it became evident that the police had arrived.

  Before Huldar could open his mouth, another member of the team called from th
e hall. ‘We’ve found something in the kitchen that you need to see.’

  He couldn’t imagine that anything could be more important than the child under the bed. The kitchen would have to wait.

  Chapter 3

  A housefly was bashing against the little window high up by the basement ceiling. Its strength was waning, the buzzing and knocking on the glass were growing gradually more sporadic, its struggle was almost over. Goodness knows what the fly was so desperate to reach outside that it was worth sacrificing its life for. The garden lay under a blanket of snow, bordered by skeletal bushes. The fly wouldn’t stand a chance out there. At least it was warm here in the basement. Yet it persisted, caring nothing for the corpses of other flies littering the dusty windowsill after failed attempts to escape the same way. Perhaps it was time to give the sill a clean. Karl decided to wait until this fly joined its fallen comrades or he would only have to repeat the exercise, and picking up a duster wasn’t really his thing.

  He was finding it hard to adjust to the quiet. Before, he wouldn’t even have noticed the buzzing. Raising his eyes, he studied the yellowing ceiling tiles. No sounds filtered through them from the floor above. How often had he longed for this? To be able to sit in complete silence and concentrate on listening without constant disturbances from upstairs. Without having to put on the battered headphones that always made his ears ache. Now, apart from the fly, there was nothing to disturb him; his wish had been granted. But strangely this didn’t bring him the anticipated pleasure. No celebratory fireworks went off in his head; no smile of satisfaction rose to his lips. It shouldn’t really have come as a surprise since his dreams had a habit of falling flat on the rare occasions when they came true. But the anticlimax was unusually intense this time, as he had been craving silence for so long.