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

  ‘No.’ Huldar wondered if the owner of the hands would rather die than live without them. He was grateful not to be confronted with a choice like that himself. ‘Are we looking for a corpse then? A corpse without any hands?’

  ‘We’re not exactly looking. I mean, where are we supposed to start? Any ideas gratefully received.’

  ‘So you’ve still no idea whose hands they are?’

  Erla shook her head. ‘The Identification Committee’s compared the fingerprints to the database but found no match.’ She stole another glance at her monitor but the result was just as disappointing as before. ‘Anyway, that would have been too easy.’ She surveyed the documents on her desk, her gaze pausing on the most exasperating forms, then grabbed a sheaf of papers stapled together in one corner. Huldar recognised the layout of the boxes and the official header on the top page. ‘I’ve just been sent the pathologist’s report. It’s not pretty.’

  ‘No. They rarely are.’ Huldar didn’t even try to hide his curiosity. ‘What does it say?’

  Erla picked up a page of notes that had been lying beside the report. Huldar recognised her writing. So she was still in the habit of jotting down notes on everything she saw, heard or read. He had long envied her this facility but had never been able to get into the habit himself. Erla recited the conclusions almost without drawing breath. ‘The hands belong to a male. Past middle age. Never performed any manual labour, unless it was a long time ago. There’s a mark left by a ring on the fourth finger of his left hand, presumably a wedding ring. The ring itself is missing, removed either by the person who disposed of the hands or by the owner. There’s the trace of a slightly thicker band on the fourth finger of the right hand, also missing. The mark indicates the type of ring people receive on graduation from some foreign universities or a Freemason’s ring, for example. There’s no way of establishing what kind it was. The traces of both are so faint that the pathologist thinks it possible the man may not have worn either recently. Not regularly, anyway.’ Erla looked up. ‘The man was alive when his hands were cut off. Or so the pathologist believes. Though he’s added all kinds of disclaimers.’

  Huldar nodded, his face impassive. He had heard his colleagues speculating on this point, though without any solid evidence. The rumour that the victim had been alive had probably been triggered by the grisly nature of the discovery. ‘Do they know what was used? Was it a knife or a saw?’

  ‘A chainsaw.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yeah. Shit.’

  ‘Presumably there’s no way of telling whether their owner died as a result?’

  Erla shook her head. ‘No. But the pathologist thinks it’s likely. The chances that he bled to death as a result of this … procedure … are pretty high. He says here that, alternatively, the man’s body could have gone into shock, resulting in multiple organ failure. Which would also have led to death, although he would have lived longer than if he’d died from the blood loss.’

  ‘But it’s not certain? The man could still be alive?’

  Erla shrugged. ‘Yes, theoretically. But in that case where is he? I’m betting he didn’t suffer this in silence.’

  ‘No. Unless he’s being kept unconscious or drugged.’

  ‘That’s a possibility, of course.’ Erla heaved a sigh and ran her fingers through her hair, leaving it standing on end, which made her look slightly mad. As she was, thought Huldar. ‘But the blood test came back normal.’

  ‘Where would someone get hold of a chainsaw?’

  ‘At a DIY store. Or a tool-hire company. I’m going to have checks run on all recent purchases and rentals, and I’m hoping that’ll give us a lead. Chainsaws are mainly used to cut down trees and branches, so there’s not much call for them in winter. Anyway, once we’ve collected their names it shouldn’t be too long a list.’

  ‘What about the bloke who owns the hot tub? Has his background been thoroughly checked? There must be some reason why his house was chosen. I mean, the hot tub isn’t visible from the street or the neighbouring gardens, so the culprit can’t have been driving past and decided to dispose of the hands on a whim. Surely he must have some connection to the incident?’

  ‘Benedikt Toft? We’re looking into him. So far there’s nothing to suggest anything suspicious, and the statement taken from him at the time is credible. He seemed genuinely shocked. He’s a retired widower and doesn’t have a police record, which is hardly surprising as he used to be a prosecutor.’

  ‘Could it be related to one of his old cases, then? Revenge for a jail sentence, something like that?’

  ‘Maybe. We’ve yet to get a proper statement from him. He keeps putting it off and now he’s stopped answering the phone. If we can’t get hold of him today, I’ll have him brought in. But I doubt anything’ll come of it. It’s probably just one of those weird coincidences; maybe the perpetrator was escaping through the gardens and needed to get rid of them quickly. Something like that.’ When Erla saw that Huldar wasn’t buying it, the blood rushed to her cheeks. Perhaps she was remembering the tip-off; someone had wanted them to find the hands, so the location was unlikely to have been chosen at random. ‘Anyway, Toft appears to be a perfectly ordinary citizen. And seriously pissed off as well.’

  ‘I can understand that. I hope I never find anything like that in my hot tub when I’m retired.’

  ‘Oh, he took that in his stride. No, he’s after compensation for the lid, which got broken. Maybe I can trick him into coming down to the station by pretending I want to discuss damages.’

  Huldar was speechless. People’s behaviour rarely took him by surprise any more, but this was an odd reaction, to say the least. ‘I’d take a good look at him, if I were you. Any normal person would take a week to recover from the shock before they even started thinking about compensation.’

  Erla’s face hardened again. ‘I’m well aware of that. Though I expect his years in court will have made him thicker-skinned than most.’ Folding her arms across her chest, she leant back in her chair. ‘I can handle this, Huldar.’

  Instead of sighing he smiled at her. ‘I didn’t mean to imply you couldn’t. But let me help, Erla. I have zero interest in this office and all the crap that goes with it.’ They glanced simultaneously at the forms covering her desk. ‘Believe me.’

  Erla’s phone rang and she turned away without commenting on Huldar’s offer. It was impossible to tell if she had recognised his sincerity. But when she waved him out without so much as looking at him, he guessed that his words had fallen on deaf ears.

  Huldar returned to his desk and told Gudlaugur that he’d been ordered to help him. The young man leapt up, staring at Huldar with flushed cheeks. Despite the hint of suspicion in his eyes, there was no disguising his relief. He explained in a rush what he was working on and as he listed one tedious chore after another, Huldar had to remind himself that it was either this or videos of stressed cats.

  Once he had started sifting through old cases in a futile search for links to hands or amputations, he couldn’t help smiling at the faith Gudlaugur apparently had in him. The young man kept peering round his monitor as if expecting Huldar to come up with the solution any minute. Unfortunately, his wish was unlikely to be granted. Huldar had a hunch that this was going to be one of the few difficult cases that came their way. In Iceland, most violent incidents or murders were solved either the same day or within forty-eight hours. He had no doubt that they would crack this one in the end – but the end was a long way off.

  Chapter 5

  They were met in the school foyer by a sign that announced in large letters: Education for all and for all abilities. Huldar wasn’t after that; he wanted the office. Freyja spotted another sign, in much smaller letters, which directed visitors there – and to the toilets. Following the arrow, they entered a long corridor leading to the inner sanctum most feared by the kids, the office of the supreme power, the headteacher. Perhaps it had been placed right at the end of the corridor to give the pupils time to build up
a suitable level of fear and awe.

  Huldar was only too familiar with that feeling from his own school days. Snatches of memory came back thick and fast: a pencil case full of dried-up felt-tip pens, pencil stubs, a sharpener and grubby erasers; a school bag stuffed with homework assignments that never got done; a lunchbox containing leftover pieces of apple and sandwich crumbs; dog-eared textbooks that got bumped around in his bag but were never actually opened.

  Apart from the squeaking of the sticky vinyl floor under their feet, the only sound they could hear was the echo of teachers’ voices from the classrooms. The walls were covered in amateurish drawings of cells and amoebas, on what looked like cheap recycled paper. Come to think of it, Huldar had once drawn something like that in biology. But unlike these kids he hadn’t bothered to colour it in.

  The smell in the corridor was a cocktail of wet anoraks, trainers, craft glue and cleaning products. The same smell as in Huldar’s school out east. But now there was a new batch of children on the conveyor belt and it was their turn to stare out of the window while the teacher droned on about mosses, spores, adverbs and other such mysteries.

  Huldar wondered if the same thoughts were running through Freyja’s head. Unlike him she had probably been a model pupil, as conscientious as the girls in his class or his five sisters, and never had to take home a note that caused his parents to turn scarlet with rage and bawl him out for failing to listen and being disruptive in class.

  The headteacher received them in his office. He was more or less what Huldar had expected: fiftyish, with spindly legs and a tastelessly wide tie that was intended but failed to distract attention from a large paunch. The man glanced at the clock on the wall and gave a little approving nod when he saw that it was ten past nine on the dot. After offering them a cup of what turned out to be disgustingly watery coffee, he ushered them inside.

  Huldar and Freyja sat down in chairs that bore the indentations of countless people who had sat there before them, evidence of all the parents forced over the years to listen to descriptions of their unsatisfactory offspring’s latest antics, and dire warnings about how they would have to pull their socks up. It was like sitting in a mould.

  The headteacher placed his hands on the desk. His fingers were long and thin like his legs. ‘I do hope the police don’t think I’m wasting their time. Better safe than sorry was the way I looked at it.’

  Huldar answered for both of them. ‘It’s always best to report anything suspicious. You did the right thing in the circumstances, regardless of whether there’s any real cause for concern.’

  The headteacher glowed with satisfaction. From the trace of milk froth on his upper lip, it seemed that while visitors were fobbed off with dishwater, the staff enjoyed cappuccinos. ‘Anyway, how can I help you? I’m a bit pushed for time, so we’d probably better cut to the chase.’

  Huldar didn’t wait to be asked twice; it was an odd feeling to be sitting in a headteacher’s office after all these years. ‘I’ve received confirmation from a handwriting expert that the threatening letter, if you can call it that, was written by the same person as the letter signed by a boy called Thröstur in 9–B. So I was wondering if you could tell us this Thröstur’s patronymic, and, if you happen to remember him, give us your opinion of the boy. As I told you on the phone, Freyja here is a child psychologist from the Children’s House, who’s helping me with the inquiry. She’s bound by confidentiality, just as I am.’ Huldar made to pat the arm of Freyja’s chair at this point but her hand got in the way. She jerked it back as though she’d been burnt. The headteacher looked rather disconcerted, though he tried not to show it.

  ‘I see.’ The headteacher drew himself up a little in his chair, as if Huldar’s mention of confidentiality had lifted the conversation on to a higher plane. ‘I’ll check the class lists for that year; I dug them out earlier.’ The man turned to his screen and read something on it while carefully moving the mouse. ‘Thröstur, you say. Thröstur, Thröstur. Here he is. Thröstur Agnesarson. Thröstur Agnesarson. Aha. Him. Of course.’

  ‘Of course?’

  ‘It’s just that I remember the boy so well I can’t understand why I didn’t twig immediately. In hindsight, it had to be him. I’d just been appointed back then and kept getting complaints about him, though he was new at the school too. New pupils don’t usually cause much trouble. Not to begin with, anyway. He was the exception and had the dubious honour of being the first difficult pupil I had to deal with in my capacity as head. There have been any number since then, of course. I’m not sure I’d have remembered the later ones nearly as well.’

  ‘Did he have behavioural issues?’ asked Freyja.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t put it like that. This was different. Not the usual ADHD or ADD. He wasn’t diagnosed as dyslexic either, or autistic. Didn’t have Oppositional Defiant Disorder. Mind you, many of these diagnoses were fairly new at the time, so it’s possible the findings would be different today. People have more experience in identifying all kinds of syndromes and disorders.’

  ‘Then why was he hauled in to see you so often?’ Huldar wished the man would just get to the point. He had no interest in the history of ADHD, and even if Freyja had she was presumably better informed than the headteacher. Huldar’s aversion stemmed partly from the realisation that he may well have been struggling with some such disorder himself in his youth but had never received any help. Who knows, if he’d been born later, maybe he could have been a doctor today? But perhaps that was aiming a bit high; improved concentration might have enabled him to sustain a relationship, at least.

  ‘You may well ask.’ The man’s gaze swung from Freyja to Huldar and back again. ‘He was perfectly capable of concentrating and didn’t have any particular difficulties with his studies – when he bothered to apply himself. His problems weren’t connected to his school work or clashes with other pupils or teachers. It was some psychological issue that we couldn’t deal with. My staff and I soon ran out of ideas, so we brought in a professional. A child psychologist like you.’ He subjected Freyja to an appreciative gaze. Huldar felt it had lingered quite long enough – no sign of ADHD in the headteacher’s case.

  ‘What came of it?’ he prompted.

  ‘I never got to hear. He saw the psychologist outside school. I received one report, if I remember right, which said the boy should soon start feeling better. It also included advice on how to handle him if we experienced any further problems. But the boy left before the end of the academic year, so he became the problem of some other school, some other head.’

  ‘How did it manifest itself?’ Freyja was leaning to the right, putting as much distance between herself and Huldar as possible.

  ‘The boy was … well, how shall I put it? Sullen, perhaps? He was never happy; I don’t ever remember seeing him smile. He was obsessed with death and evil. Any pictures he drew were of dead people and his essays were full of executions and killings. I had so many teachers trooping in here to complain about him it was like having a revolving door in my office. I can check later today if we still have any of his drawings. Or his writing. You can judge for yourselves. The drawings were particularly unfortunate. In fact, I very much doubt anyone here will have kept them.’

  Clearly, Thröstur’s pictures were unlikely to have graced the walls in the corridors. Huldar wondered if it was possible to draw a dead cell or amoeba. ‘Did he get into fights? Did he injure any of the other pupils or his friends?’

  ‘Friends? He didn’t have any friends. Oddly enough, though, he wasn’t bullied. At first I thought it was because the other kids were too kind-hearted, that they felt sorry for the lad and understood that he had psychiatric problems. But it quickly became clear that it wasn’t that. They were just frightened of him. Too frightened to bully him. That tells you something. But he never hurt anyone. Not here or anywhere else, as far as I know.’

  ‘You say the psychologist was optimistic that his condition would improve?’ Freyja sat up so she could see the headteacher
above his screen.

  ‘Well, I don’t know if the verdict was that positive. What they sent me wasn’t a final report so much as progress notes for our information. Actually, I remember it said the boy’s behaviour was related to some kind of family drama. But there were no details. His family situation was quite ordinary, as far as I can recall; his mother was a single parent and he had a younger sister who was at a different school, for some reason. Understandably, the reference roused my curiosity and I felt that it would be better if I knew more. I called the boy in to see me and questioned him about what was going on at home, but he completely clammed up. Shortly afterwards I was notified by his mother that he would be studying at home for the rest of the year, before changing schools in the autumn. As it was close to the end of term anyway, I turned a blind eye to the matter of his attendance. The school certainly functioned more smoothly without him for those last few weeks.’

  Neither Huldar nor Freyja spoke; they were doing their best to hide their disgust. Merely to satisfy his own curiosity the man had dragged the boy in to see him and tried to pry out of him whatever had caused his distress. Such treatment could hardly have helped and it was easy to conclude that the decision to change schools had been prompted by the intrusion. Huldar was the first to break the silence. ‘Did he move to a nearby school, then? And do you know how he got on there?’

  ‘Oh, no. His family moved away and I completely lost track of him. They were obviously incapable of settling anywhere. From what I gathered, they’d only just moved to this area at the beginning of the school year.’

  So perhaps the change hadn’t been motivated by his decision to give the boy the third degree. Dissatisfaction with their local school was only one of many reasons people had for moving. The boy’s mother could have got a job that required them to live in another part of town, or they could have lost their home. As a single mother she was probably renting and tenants didn’t enjoy much security in Iceland.