The Darkness(40)

She would have to stop off at the hostel in Njardvík as well, to show Dóra the photo she had sneaked of Baldur Albertsson. If Dóra wasn’t there, she could always email her the picture, but she would rather witness her reaction first hand. It might be a shot in the dark but, at this stage, Hulda felt she had to keep all avenues open.

It occurred to her that it would also be worth taking this opportunity to examine the cove where Elena had died or, rather, where her body had been found. There was always a possibility that she had breathed her last somewhere else.

Hulda was behind the wheel and heading out of town before it dawned on her that she probably wasn’t in a fit state to drive, with all the alcohol that must still be sloshing around in her veins. It was years since she had last found herself in this position. At the next junction, she did a U-turn and went home to call a taxi.

It was a relief to be able to slump in the back seat and relax for once, while somebody else took care of the driving, especially since the taxi was a new, luxury vehicle that purred along the Reykjanes dual carriageway with a smoothness and speed a world away from her old rust bucket.

The black lava-fields unfolded before her eyes, seeming almost to flow past the car windows, majestic in their stark simplicity, yet monotonous as an endlessly repeated refrain. She remembered reading about how they had formed, recalling that some of the lava dated from before Iceland was settled in the 800s, some of it had been produced by later eruptions. Above the flat terrain, the clouds grew heavier and blacker the further they travelled from Reykjavík, until the odd drop of rain began to spatter the windscreen.

The combination of lava and rain had a calming effect on Hulda and she let her eyelids droop, not to doze but to gather herself to face the day’s demands. A series of images played through her mind, but Elena no longer occupied the foreground, having retreated behind the sharpening figures of Dimma and, now, Pétur.

She found herself dwelling more on Pétur than she’d expected, as if suddenly accepting the inevitable. Yes, age had crept up on her, taking her cruelly by surprise, but the changes it brought could be positive, too. Perhaps, after all, she deserved to be contented; to stay up late on a weekday evening, knocking back wine with a handsome doctor, without a bad conscience. Deserved a chance to forget the nightmare, once in a while. Deserved not to have to take orders from a useless boss who should never have been promoted above her.

Lost in these thoughts, she nodded off in spite of herself and slept until the driver woke her by announcing that they were nearing their destination. It took her a moment or two to work out where she was: Keflavík police station.

Falling asleep in the middle of the day was quite out of character, to say nothing of falling asleep in a taxi. There must be something in the air; everything seemed out of joint today. Hulda had a foreboding that something was about to happen, she just didn’t know what.





IV


Darkness had fallen in earnest now. After he had joined her at the top of the slope, they had walked over level ground for a while before pausing briefly to fix torches to their heads. Now, she could see clearly where she was placing her feet, but all else beyond the narrow cone of light was shrouded in darkness. When she asked if they were anywhere near the place where they were to spend the night, he shook his head. ‘Still a way to go,’ he said.

The snow was so perfect, glittering in the light of her head torch, that it seemed like sacrilege to tread on it and break the pristine crust. Never before had she experienced such an intense connection to nature. The icy fetters seemed to cast a mysterious enchantment over their surroundings. Focusing on the elemental beauty, she did her best to forget her reservations about the trip.

Before long, the hard, icy surface gave way to deeper, softer going. Stopping for a moment, she switched off her head torch and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The faint outlines of snowy knolls and mounds could be glimpsed all around them, and it came home to her more starkly than ever that without her guide she would be utterly lost; she hadn’t a clue how to find the hut they were making for or retrace their steps to the car. Without him, she would almost certainly die of exposure out here.

She shuddered at the thought.

Switching on her torch again, she put her head down and set off doggedly in his wake. A gap had opened up between them and, picking up her pace, she tried to close it. She became reckless in her haste and, next thing she knew, the ground was giving way beneath her feet. Feeling herself sinking into soft snow, she started panicking that she had fallen into a hole and would never be able to get out. It turned out not to be as deep as she’d feared, but extricating herself from the clutches of the drift proved impossible, especially when weighed down by the backpack. She called out, first in a wavering voice, then louder, until he heard and, turning back, came to her rescue and heaved her out. On she went, trailing in his wake, hearing now and then the sound of water trickling under the snow, its gurgling providing a comfortingly familiar note amidst the inhuman silence of the mountains.

Abruptly, he halted, head turning this way and that, as if working out the lie of the land. She could just distinguish the dark shape of a mountain in the distance, its gully-scored slopes blurred by a layer of white.

She listened out for the river, but its gurgling had fallen quiet. Now, there was nothing but silence.





V


‘Looks like you’re in luck,’ said the duty sergeant, who had introduced himself as ólíver. He was tall, without an ounce of spare flesh on his lanky frame. ‘Very lucky. Because that Syrian girl’s still here. We were going to put her on a plane this morning, but her lawyer kicked up a stink. You know what it’s like.’