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Hypothermia

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‘I thought maybe they’d moved,’ Erlendur said.

‘You dickhead,’ Eva Lind said, her gaze fixed on her brother. ‘Have you started telling lies for him now?’

‘It was a hell of a racket,’ Sindri said apologetically.

‘Have you thought about it?’ Eva Lind asked Erlendur. ‘About Mum. You are going to meet her, aren’t you?’

Erlendur didn’t answer immediately. He’d had little time to give any thought to what Eva was trying to arrange. He had no desire to see his ex-wife, the mother of his children. But, then again, he didn’t want to appear dismissive of Eva’s initiative now that she seemed to have developed a new interest.

‘What are you trying to achieve?’ he asked.

His gaze swung back and forth between brother and sister as they sat on the sofa facing him. Their visits had gradually become more frequent: first Sindri, after he’d moved back to Reykjavík from the east where he had been working in a fish factory, then Eva Lind, after she had cut back on her drug intake. Their visits meant a great deal to Erlendur, especially when they came together. He liked to observe their relationship. As far as he could tell it was good. Eva Lind was the bossy big sister and sometimes adopted the parental role. She would give Sindri an earful if she was displeased. Erlendur suspected that she had been put in charge of her brother at times when they were younger. And although Sindri gave back as good as he got, he displayed no ill feeling or impatience.

‘I just think it would be good for you both,’ Eva Lind said. ‘I don’t understand why you can’t even talk to each other.’

‘Why do you want to interfere?’

‘Because I’m your daughter.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Oh, you know, that she’d do it. She’d meet you.’

‘Did you have to apply much pressure?

‘Yes. You’re as bad as each other. I don’t know why you ever broke up.’

‘Why is this so important to you?’

‘You ought to be able to talk to each other,’ Eva Lind said. ‘I don’t want things to go on like this any more. I’ve… Sindri too, we’ve never seen you two together. Not once. Don’t you find that weird? Do you think it’s normal? That your children have never even seen the pair of you together? Their own parents?’

‘Is that anything unusual these days?’ Erlendur asked. Then he directed his words to Sindri. ‘Are you just as set on this?’

‘I really couldn’t give a toss,’ Sindri said. ‘Eva’s trying to drag me into it but I really-’

‘You don’t have a fucking clue,’ Eva Lind interrupted.

‘No, right. There’s no point trying to tell her this is a load of crap. If you and Mum had the slightest interest in talking, you’d have done it by now. Eva’s just sticking her nose in, like always. She can’t stop. Sticks her nose in everywhere, especially when it has sod-all to do with her.’

Eva Lind looked daggers at her brother.

‘You’re a twat,’ she said.

‘I think maybe you should leave it, Eva,’ Erlendur said. ‘It’s…’

‘She’s up for it,’ Eva Lind said. ‘It’s taken me two months to talk her round. You have no idea what shit I’ve had to go through.’

‘Look, I understand what you’re trying to do but in all seriousness I don’t think I can bring myself to.’

‘Why not?’

‘It’s… It was over between your mother and me a long time ago and it won’t help anyone to rake the whole thing up now. It’s past. Finished. Over. I think maybe it would be better to think of it like that and try to concentrate on the future instead.’

‘I told you,’ Sindri said, with a look at his sister.

‘Concentrate on the future! Bollocks!’

‘Have you thought it through, Eva?’ Erlendur asked. ‘Is she planning to come here? Am I supposed to visit her? Or are we to meet on neutral territory?’

He looked at her, reflecting on the fact that he had started to use Cold War terminology when talking about his ex-wife.

‘Neutral territory!’ Eva Lind snorted. ‘What do you think it’s like trying to deal with you two? You’re off your trolleys, both of you.’

She stood up.

‘We’re nothing but a sodding joke to you. Me and Mum and Sindri – we’re nothing but a joke!’

‘That’s not true at all, Eva,’ Erlendur said. ‘I really didn’t-’

‘You’ve never taken the slightest notice of us!’ Eva Lind said. ‘Never listened to a word we had to say!’

Before Erlendur and Sindri knew it, she had stormed out of the door, slamming it so hard that the entire building echoed.

‘What…? What happened?’ Erlendur asked, looking at his son.

Sindri shrugged.

‘She’s been like this ever since she quit using; incredibly touchy. You can’t say a word without her going mental.’

‘When did she start this business about wanting your mother and me to meet?’

‘She’s always talked that way,’ Sindri said. ‘Ever since I can remember. She thinks… oh, I don’t know, Eva’s so full of crap.’

‘I’ve never heard her talk crap,’ Erlendur said. ‘What does she think?’

‘She said it might help her.’

‘What? What might help her?’

‘If you and Mum… If things didn’t have to be so bad between you and Mum.’

Erlendur stared at his son.

‘She said that?’

‘Yes.’

‘It might help her to get a grip on her life?’

‘Something like that.’

‘If your mother and I tried to make up?’

‘She just wants you to talk to each other,’ Sindri said, stubbing out the cigarette he had smoked down to the end. ‘Why’s that so complicated?’

Erlendur lay awake after their visit, thinking about a house in the east of the country that had once been reputed to be haunted. It was a two-storey wooden house, built by a Danish merchant towards the end of the nineteenth century. In the 1930s a family from Reykjavík had moved in and shortly afterwards stories began to circulate about the woman of the house, who kept hearing the sound of a child crying behind the panelling in the sitting room. No one had mentioned anything of the kind before and no one could hear the crying except the housewife when she was alone at home. Her husband talked dismissively of local cats but his wife obstinately insisted it was nothing of the sort. She became fearful of the dark and of ghosts, suffered from nightmares and generally felt ill at ease in the house. In the end she could no longer bear it and persuaded her husband to move away from the district. They returned to Reykjavík after only three years in the east. The house was sold to some locals who never noticed anything unusual.

Shortly after 1950 a man became interested in the story of the housewife from Reykjavík and the crying child, and started researching the history of the house. A number of families had lived there since the Danish merchant sold it, including three families simultaneously in one period, but there was never any mention of a child crying behind the sitting-room panelling. On delving further back into the early history of the house in search of any link to a child, the man discovered that the Danish merchant who built it had had three daughters who all lived to a ripe old age. The merchant’s servants had no children. But when finally he turned to the story of the house’s construction he found out that there had been two head carpenters, one of whom had taken over the job from the other. The former, who resigned from the job, had had a two-year-old daughter who was killed in an accident on the site where the sitting room was later built. A pile of timber had fallen on her from a height, killing her instantly.

Erlendur had heard the story of the haunted house in his youth. His mother had it first-hand from the man who had dug up the tale of the carpenter’s daughter. He completely ruled out the possibility that the housewife from Reykjavík could have known anything about the building of the house. Erlendur didn’t know what to make of the story. Nor did his mother.

What did it tell one about life and death?

Was the woman from Reykjavík more receptive to supernatural influences than other people or had she heard the story of the carpenter’s daughter and responded as she had because she suffered from an overactive imagination?

And if she was more receptive than other people, what on earth was it that had lurked behind the panelling?

11

The woman remembered clearly the period when María and Baldvin had started dating. Her name was Thorgerdur and she was tall and big-boned, with a mane of dark hair. She had studied history with María at university but had given up after two years and switched to a degree in nursing. She had kept in close touch with María ever since their student days and was chatty and not at all shy about talking to a police officer like Erlendur. She even volunteered the information that she had once witnessed a crime; she had been at the chemist’s when a hooded man had burst in with a knife and threatened the sales lady.

‘He was pathetic, really,’ Thorgerdur explained. ‘A druggie. They caught him immediately and we bystanders had to identify him. It was easy. He was still wearing the same shabby clothes. Needn’t have bothered with the hood. A stunning-looking boy.’

Erlendur smiled privately. A member of the underclass, Sigurdur Óli would have said. It was one of those terms he had picked up in America. To Sigurdur Óli’s mind it applied not only to criminals and drug addicts, whom he described as total losers, but also to anyone else he disliked for whatever reason: uneducated employees, shop assistants, labourers, even tradesmen, all of whom drove him up the wall. He had once flown to Paris for a weekend break with Bergthóra. They had taken a charter flight and he had been disgusted when most of the other passengers, who were on their annual work outing, became rowdy and drunk and, to cap it all, broke into applause when the plane landed safely in Paris. ‘Plebs,’ he’d sniffed to Bergthóra, full of disdain at the behaviour of the underclass.