The Darkness(58)

‘Absolutely,’ Hulda said.

‘House’ was a bit of an exaggeration. As they drew nearer, it was revealed as a primitive hut or cabin, next to what appeared to be a building site. Although there was no sign of anyone at work, it was clear that these were the foundations for a larger house that was currently under construction. Hulda parked in front of the hut and, from habit, scanned the surroundings carefully before getting out of the car. It would have been impossible for anyone to hide out here in this open, grassy landscape, in the light summer night. There weren’t even any rocks. The only potential hiding place was the hut itself.

Hulda met Bjartur’s eye. ‘There’s nothing to see here.’

‘Shouldn’t we at least take a quick look inside?’ he asked.

‘We don’t have a warrant,’ she objected, though she felt sorely tempted to flout the rules. After all, what had she got to lose? Especially now they’d come all this way.

‘We could look in through the windows,’ Bjartur suggested.

Hulda shrugged. She could hardly stop him.

He made a circuit of the little hut, peering in at the windows. Then, without warning, he tried the handle and the door opened. ‘It’s unlocked,’ he called, and before she could react he had stepped inside.

‘Oh, what the hell,’ Hulda muttered, and set off unhurriedly after him, reflecting that, even if someone found out, she couldn’t be sacked twice.

As she entered the hut she could feel her heart beating faster in anticipation, the old adrenaline pulsing through her veins, and with that her brain suddenly seemed to awake from its torpor: Amena’s elusive comment, which had been niggling at her for the last couple of hours, came to her in a flash. The evening before she died, Elena had sat talking for ages on the phone in the hostel lobby. But Hulda now clearly recalled the receptionist telling her that international calls were blocked. And Elena only really spoke Russian. Was it possible that she had been talking to Bjartur?

Bjartur.

Where had he got to? She couldn’t see him anywhere inside the tiny hut. Before she could look round, she felt a heavy blow land on her head.





XXIII


It took a while to clean the hut, hampered by the dark, and even then it was clear that he would have to come back as soon as possible with stronger products to try to obliterate any remaining traces. He felt oddly detached, as though some other man had hit the woman over the head with the axe and he was saddled with the job of cleaning up after him. In a way, he felt sorry for Katja, yet at the same time he was furious with her for behaving so foolishly. She didn’t deserve to die but, in the circumstances, his reaction had been the only one possible.

A glance at the hut’s guestbook confirmed that days, even weeks, tended to pass between visits at this time of year, so he should be able to get away with it if he came straight back this evening.

But right now, the priority was to dispose of the body.

He had zipped it into her sleeping bag then dragged it all the way back to his car, confident that the falling snow would cover his tracks fairly quickly. In the dark hours before dawn, in the dead of winter, far from civilization, he was confident of being able to act without being seen or interrupted. The problem was how to get rid of the body. All the solutions he came up with would entail a risk, some greater than others.

In the end, he made up his mind to drive into the interior, heading for the nearest ice cap. He knew of a belt of crevasses that would be ideal for his purpose. The final stretch was inaccessible by car, but in these freezing, snowy conditions it would be safe to cover it on skis. Such a thing would never have been possible in summer, when the glaciers were crawling with tourists, but at this time of year it was worth the risk. So that’s where he was going now, and that’s where he would make sure that Katja disappeared for ever.





XXIV


For too long, Hulda had closed her eyes to the truth. She had lived with the devastating consequences of that fact for quarter of a century now. She wasn’t sure when she had realized what was going on but, by then, it was already too late. This she blamed partly on denial, partly on her blindness to what was going on right under her nose. The hideous irony of it didn’t escape her. After all, she had prided herself on her powers of perception, regarded herself as one of the best detectives on the force, precisely because nothing ever got past her, because she had a knack of seeing through all the lies and deception well ahead of her colleagues.

But when the crime was being committed in her own home, she hadn’t noticed a thing.

Or hadn’t wanted to notice.

Confronting the fact had been almost unthinkable. She had been in love with Jón for most of her adult life; they had married young, and he had always treated her well, been an honest, trustworthy husband. Their love had blossomed, at least for a time, and it had been true love; she remembered the first year of their courtship, she had been swept off her feet by this handsome, suave man, who seemed so urbane and worldly. So it had been all too easy to overlook certain clues, to convince herself that they meant something different.

They had both been so happy when Dimma was born, such proud parents. But when she turned ten, their daughter’s behaviour had undergone a change and she’d become moody and withdrawn, suffering from bouts of depression. Yet still Hulda hadn’t twigged. She had allowed herself the luxury of living in ignorance, persuading herself that the cause couldn’t lie at home.