The Darkness(30)

‘Delicious coffee,’ she lied. ‘I can only stay for a minute, though. There’s somewhere else I’ve got to be.’ She took a sip.

‘I tried once,’ Baldur remarked. ‘To join the police, I mean. Didn’t get in.’ He patted his impressive paunch. ‘Never been in good enough shape, and it’s too late to do anything about that now. Albert was always the skinny one.’

There was no hint of resentment in Baldur’s words, though this was the second time he had praised his brother at his own expense: earlier, he had mentioned that Albert had been the first in the family to qualify as a lawyer. His admiration of his brother appeared genuine, free from all envy.

‘Is he older or younger than you?’ Hulda asked tactfully, although the answer was obvious.

‘He’s ten years younger, as I’m sure you can tell. He was an afterthought – a nice surprise for our parents.’

‘Does he handle a lot of these cases?’

‘Which ones?’

‘Representing asylum-seekers.’

‘Yes, I think so. For him, the human rights angle’s more important than the money.’

‘Presumably he gets paid, though.’

‘Yes, of course, but he’s mainly in it for the people. He wants to help.’

‘What did you do?’ Hulda risked a third sip of coffee, but it was so bitter that she discreetly pushed the cup away.

‘Do?’

‘For a living. Before you moved here. Before losing your job.’

At that moment, Hulda’s phone interrupted with a noisy ringing and vibrating on the table beside her cup. She sighed inwardly when she saw that it was Magnús, the last person she wanted to speak to right now. For a moment, she dithered over whether to answer, then decided it could wait. Unsure how to turn off the volume mid-ring, or if that was even possible, she cut the call, seizing the opportunity while she was fumbling with the phone to activate the camera. It required a bit of fiddling, but she hoped Baldur wouldn’t cotton on. She pressed ‘Capture’, and the resulting click seemed to echo around the room. Shooting her companion an apologetic look, she said: ‘Sorry, I’m hopeless with this thing. I was trying to switch it to mute.’

‘I know what you mean. I’m not too handy with mine either,’ Baldur said, apparently indifferent to having his picture snapped, if he even realized that this is what she had done.

‘I worked as a caretaker for several years,’ he carried on, in answer to her earlier question, ‘but they were getting rid of people and I was one of the first they let go. Apart from that, I’ve changed jobs a lot, never stuck at one thing for long. I used to work for tradesmen, mostly, working with my hands, you know the sort of thing.’

Hulda had to admit to herself that she couldn’t picture Baldur in the role of murderer; he seemed the type who wouldn’t hurt a fly. And while appearances could be deceptive, she reckoned she was quite a good judge of character after so many years in the police, dealing with all sorts of people, both on the wrong and the right side of the law. Her judgement wasn’t infallible, though. It had let her down badly in one instance … And that had been her greatest mistake, changing her life for ever.

And even if she was right in her view that Baldur would be incapable of murdering a woman in cold blood, there was still an outside chance that he could be implicated in Elena’s death. For all Hulda knew, he could, at some point in the past, have accepted the offer of a dodgy but well-remunerated job and fallen in with the wrong crowd as a result.

‘Your brother had some papers for me,’ she reminded him politely.

Baldur’s face fell. Clearly, he had been hoping she would stick around a bit longer, chatting over bad coffee.

‘Of course.’ He got up and left the room, returning almost immediately with a brown envelope. ‘Here you go. I don’t know what’s in it, but I hope it’ll come in useful. Albert should know, as a former cop.’

Hulda resisted the temptation to correct him: Albert had never been a cop; he’d only worked for the police as a lawyer. ‘Mm,’ she said non-committally, then pushed back her chair and stood up, conspicuously checking her watch to hint that she had to get going.

‘Did you work with him yourself?’ asked Baldur, in a transparent attempt to spin out their conversation a little longer.

‘Not directly, but I remember him. He was pretty well thought of,’ she said, though she had no idea if this was true.

Baldur smiled: ‘That’s nice to hear.’

He seemed such a genuine, friendly soul. Even from this brief acquaintance, Hulda found it hard to believe he could be linked to the case, but it would be up to Dóra to settle the matter.

Hulda took her leave, forcing herself to wait until she was outside before looking in the envelope, though she was so consumed by curiosity she would have liked to tear it open then and there.

So it came as a huge disappointment to discover that the papers – a quick shuffle revealed ten pages – were all in Russian. She leafed through them several times in the hope of finding something she could understand, skimming the text on every page, but it was no good. Some were handwritten, others computer printouts, the rest clearly official documents, but she hadn’t a clue what information they contained.

Taking out her phone, she considered calling a state-registered translator, but she could leave that until tomorrow. Instead, she would drive out to Njardvík and show Dóra Baldur’s mugshot; see where that got her.