‘You murdered Elena, didn’t you?’ she said, mastering her voice. ‘You two had a long phone conversation the evening before she died. You never mentioned that.’
‘Elena. She worked it out,’ Bjartur said. He had resumed shovelling earth on top of Hulda but now paused again, resting the tip of his spade on the ground for a moment. ‘Elena was the only person who knew that Katja and I were close friends. She wouldn’t stop pestering me about what had happened to her. At first, I lied and said I’d helped Katja give the authorities the slip; that she was hiding out in the countryside. But Elena kept nagging at me to let her see Katja. Then she rang me the evening she … she died. She was threatening to go to the police. I tried to convince her not to. I had to stop her, you must see that?’
Hulda nodded.
‘I invited her for a walk down by the sea later that evening. She had no reason to be afraid of me.’
XXVI
‘I’ve got to see Katja!’ Elena said over the phone. ‘I’ve got to!’
‘Well, you can’t,’ Bjartur said. He was sitting in his garage, or rather his parents’ garage. It had been a challenging month: too few jobs coming in, and he’d been feeling too listless to work on his own writing. The incident in the highlands was preying on his mind. He kept replaying it in his head, the moment when he had been forced to kill the woman he loved. Katja, who had come to the country as an asylum-seeker; who he had met when he was hired to interpret for her. They’d hit it off so well from the start, or so he’d believed. And she was so beautiful. As Katja didn’t speak a word of English, she had often turned to him for help and, sometimes, they had ended up chatting all evening. They shared an interest in nature and Russian literature. He’d never found it easy to talk to women, not Icelandic women, anyway, and now that he was over forty he had pretty much resigned himself to being single, but then Katja had entered his life. He had fantasized about marrying her, which would automatically entitle her to a residence permit. Maybe he could move out of his parents’ place, or pack them off to an old people’s home and move into their house with Katja. In his imagination, he had already planned their future together and was just waiting for the right moment, confident that Katja felt the same. That she loved him. Then she had casually dropped into conversation that she’d like to get out of town some time. He had immediately taken her at her word, aware that this was his chance. He would take her into the interior, where they could stay in a mountain hut. And there, when it was just the two of them, cut off from the outside world, their relationship would begin.
But things had turned out quite differently. He’d ended up having to kill her. Of course, he hadn’t wanted to but then, sometimes, you didn’t have a choice. Like in Elena’s case; he’d been forced to kill her as well. She was always asking about Katja, and he had to lie, claim that he’d helped her go into hiding; that Katja had heard she was unlikely to get her residence permit and panicked. Of course, this wasn’t true either, but he’d had to come up with a plausible reason for why she should have run away. Elena hadn’t questioned the story.
He had been praying that Elena would be deported from Iceland soon so he would never have to see her again. And that Katja’s fate would never come to light. The police had carried out a search for her, but no one had been aware of their trip to the mountains and no one – with the exception of Elena – knew that he and Katja had got on so well. Got on so well, that is, until the night in the hut.
But then came the day of Elena’s phone call. She had been told, as far as she could grasp with her limited English, that her application had been accepted. Her call to tell him the news had thrown him into a blind panic: she wanted to see Katja, to tell her the good news and persuade her to give herself up so they could start a new life together in Iceland.
‘I’ve got to see her,’ Elena insisted. ‘And you’re the only person who can help. Just tell me where she is – I won’t tell anyone. I just want to see her, talk to her.’
‘We can’t take the risk,’ he said.
There was a silence at the other end.
‘Then I’m going to the police,’ Elena announced.
‘The police?’
‘Yes. I’m going to tell them you helped her run away. If the police question you, you’ll have to tell them the truth. And then she might have a chance, don’t you understand? A chance to get an actual residence permit. But she’s got to give herself up first!’
There was another silence. They had been on the phone so long that Bjartur’s nerves were in tatters. He was worn out with the strain of having to lie. And now he was afraid, too.
He couldn’t go to prison. He couldn’t. The murder mustn’t come to light. Her body was lying safely hidden at the bottom of a crevasse and he had done his best to scrub away any incriminating evidence from the hut. Besides, no one, not a soul, had a clue that they’d been there. He’d got away with it, or so he had thought, until that bitch Elena had decided to ruin everything.
‘OK,’ he said at last.
‘OK?’ repeated Elena, audibly astonished. ‘You want me to go to the police?’
‘No, I’ll tell you where she is. Or … wouldn’t you rather come with me this evening and see her in person?’
‘What? Seriously? Yes, of course I would.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be all right. It’s a big day, exciting news … I’ll take you there.’
As he spoke, the wheels in his mind were busy turning, working out the perfect spot: the isolated little cove at Flekkuvík, about halfway between Reykjavík and Keflavík. It was an area he knew well; through his work as a guide, he was familiar with much of his country’s geography, either from first-hand experience or reading about it in books. The advantage of this particular cove was that, although only quarter of an hour’s drive from Njardvík, it wasn’t overlooked by any houses or the road. They were guaranteed to be the only people around since it wasn’t even accessible by car: they would have to get out and walk the last few hundred yards.
‘Can you come and pick me up?’ Elena asked.
‘Hmm … not from the hostel. I can’t take the risk of being seen – because of Katja being in hiding, you understand.’ He mentioned a shop within walking distance of the hostel and asked Elena to meet him there.
‘It’s such a long way,’ Elena whined, her teeth chattering from the cold. Although there was no snow on the ground, the weather was freezing and she wasn’t adequately dressed. Still, it couldn’t be helped. Bjartur led the way along the path to the cove. Ahead loomed a couple of buildings, hard to make out in the gloom.
‘She’s in that house over there, the one closer to the sea,’ he said at last.
‘Seriously? Katja’s there?’
‘No one would think of looking for her here.’
‘Unbelievable. You mean she’s been here all the time?’
‘She was staying with me to begin with,’ Bjartur said, allowing a little warmth to steal into his voice. For a moment, he almost believed it himself, recalling his fantasy about marrying her and taking her to live in his house. ‘But it was too risky,’ he went on. ‘I’ve got my elderly parents living with me. They’d have found out sooner or later.’
‘I see,’ Elena said.
He couldn’t read her expression in the darkness. Was she convinced?
‘I’m sure she’ll be eligible for a residence permit, like me,’ Elena continued after a moment. ‘Our situations aren’t that different.’
‘Right,’ said Bjartur. ‘Right.’
‘But … it’s a pity she had to run away like that. Was it your idea?’ Her voice was accusatory.
‘Mine? Of course not.’ Bjartur adopted an injured tone. ‘I did my best to talk her out of it.’
‘Does she know? That we’re coming, I mean?’
‘No. She hasn’t got a phone.’
Elena was silent.
Only as they approached the houses did she speak again.
‘You know what, this doesn’t feel right, Bjartur. No one could live here. There’s no glass in the windows. These buildings are empty.’