The Creak on the Stairs Read online

  ‘Oh, Ása darling, we didn’t mean to upset you,’ Magnea said, getting up and going over to sit by her mother-in-law.

  Ása laughed again, feeling foolish. All eyes were on her; she wasn’t used to being the centre of attention. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what came over me. It’s wonderful news. Wonderful.’

  ‘Now we’ll finally have a use for all those clothes you’ve knitted,’ Bjarni said.

  Ása nodded and bit her lip. She managed to prevent any more tears from spilling over but felt as if something had broken loose inside her. A sensation that she hadn’t felt for a long time made itself known. Excited anticipation. For the first time in years she actually had something to look forward to.

  Elma was on her way home when Sævar rang. He asked, apparently casually, whether she’d like to grab some supper. ‘It’s past eight, Sævar,’ she pointed out. ‘I’ve already eaten.’

  ‘What about a drink, then? My shout,’ Sævar suggested. Elma could tell over the phone that he was smiling and felt she couldn’t very well refuse.

  She’d never been to Gamla kaupfélagið – the Old Cooperative – before. A bar, restaurant and a popular party venue at weekends, it stood on the high street in an attractive, white gabled building. Ironically, although the town had grown since Elma was young, there were fewer pubs and restaurants than there used to be. Ever since the Hvalfjörður tunnel had been built, the locals had tended to head into Reykjavík when they wanted to go out and the nightlife in Akranes had suffered as a result. Still, the quality of the places on offer had generally improved. When Elma went in, she was pleased to discover that the bar had a simple but tasteful interior. The lighting was cosily dim and there were few other customers in there, as you’d expect on a Monday evening.

  Sævar was sitting at a table at the back of the room and had already ordered her a beer. He was wearing a T-shirt, which revealed the thick pelt on his arms, and his hair was tousled. Elma’s thoughts went inadvertently to Davíð, who used to spend ages styling his hair in the mornings, standing in front of the mirror, making sure not a single hair was out of place. She had always found it rather endearing, taking it for granted that he wanted to look good for her. Sævar hadn’t even shaved. His beer had left a moustache of foam on his upper lip and Elma felt an almost irresistible urge to reach out and wipe it off with her thumb. Sævar took another good swig, wiped his lip, then put down his glass.

  ‘It’s over,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ve split up with Telma.’

  ‘Oh,’ Elma said, taken aback. Sævar’s expression conveyed neither relief nor pleasure and she hadn’t a clue how she was supposed to react. She took a sip of beer to fill the awkward pause.

  ‘She’d only just told me her mother had cancer and what do I do? I go and dump her.’

  Elma choked on her beer and couldn’t stop the ensuing bout of coughing which had changed into laughter before she knew what was happening. Her whole body shook with the effort to suppress it.

  ‘Are you OK? Have you got something stuck in your windpipe?’ Before Sævar could come round the table and do the Heimlich manoeuvre on her, she waved him away. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. ‘Are you laughing?’ he asked, astonished.

  ‘Sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I don’t know why I’m laughing. Of course it’s not remotely funny.’ She concentrated on taking deep breaths and took another mouthful of beer, careful to make sure it went down the right way this time.

  ‘Are you losing it, Elma?’ She was relieved to see that he seemed amused, in spite of her inappropriate reaction.

  ‘I don’t know. Probably.’ She dried her eyes and adopted a serious face. ‘Sorry, I’ve stopped now. What were you saying – is it over between you?’

  ‘Yes, it’s over,’ Sævar said.

  ‘And is that a good thing or…?’

  ‘Yes, it’s a good thing, Elma. It’s such a relief, but at the same time I feel like a total shit. I mean, she’d only told me a few days ago that her mother was ill.’ Sævar pulled a face. ‘And don’t start laughing again,’ he added, shooting Elma a warning look.

  ‘So she took it badly?’

  Sævar shrugged. ‘She cried. But I don’t know – it can hardly have come as a surprise to her. It hasn’t been working for at least a year now.’

  Elma nodded and took another gulp of beer. She was beginning to get that familiar heady feeling.

  ‘I don’t really know how I feel,’ Sævar went. ‘It’s as if a chapter of my life has closed and I’ll miss it in a way. But I’m more than ready to end it and, to be honest, I feel guilty that I don’t feel worse. I mean, I should feel bad, shouldn’t I? After all, we’re talking seven years of my life. Seven years is a bloody long time.’

  Elma nodded.

  ‘Elma…’ Sævar’s gaze was fixed on his glass now. ‘I always meant to apologise for the way I ran out on you that time. I don’t know why I left like that.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ Elma said lightly.

  ‘You were saying your relationship had recently ended. Is it long since you broke up?’

  ‘Nearly four months.’

  ‘And that’s why you moved home?’

  ‘Yes,’ Elma replied. ‘It was never the plan but somehow it worked out that way.’

  ‘So it was a bad break-up?’

  Elma nodded. Judging from the silence that followed, Sævar was waiting for her to elaborate. ‘Yes, it was. Very bad. Davíð was my best friend and…’ She trailed off, afraid her voice would break and reluctant to burst into tears in front of him. Part of her wanted to tell him everything but she couldn’t bring herself to. She just couldn’t.

  Sævar signalled to the waiter to bring them more drinks. ‘Do you miss him?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Elma said, her voice emerging in a whisper. She cleared her throat. ‘I’ve just been so angry that I haven’t been able to miss him properly. But now it’s coming home to me how much I do. I just ran away.’

  ‘To Akranes, of all places,’ Sævar said with a grin. ‘Who would have imagined?’

  ‘Not me, anyway.’ Elma heaved a sigh. ‘But what about you, what originally brought you to Akranes? You said your brother lived here. What about your parents?’

  ‘My brother has a learning disability and lives in a group home. Maybe I’d have moved away if it weren’t for him,’ Sævar said. He sipped his beer and stared down at it as he spoke. ‘My parents died in a car accident five years after we moved here. I’d just turned twenty at the time. My brother was sixteen and very happy in the group home. I couldn’t abandon him. There’s only the two of us left now.’

  Elma nodded.

  ‘What is it about this town that you dislike so much?’ Sævar asked, after a brief silence.

  Elma was disconcerted at how well he could read her, since she couldn’t remember having told him about her negative feelings towards Akranes. ‘Maybe it was never the town that got to me,’ she said slowly. ‘I suppose it was more about who I was. I didn’t particularly like myself when I lived here.’

  ‘Oh? I reckon I’d have liked you a lot.’

  ‘Oh, really? I’m not so sure.’

  ‘Want a bet? Go on, tell me everything – all Elma’s dirty little secrets.’

  Elma laughed, then began to talk.

  Akranes 1992

  The bathroom mirror was so dirty that she could hardly see her reflection. She’d wiped it with water but that didn’t help much. She spat the toothpaste into the sink and stood on tiptoe to drink from the tap. Then she dried her face on her sleeve and studied herself in the mirror.

  Elísabet was nine and well aware of how beautiful she was. Even the smeary mirror couldn’t hide that. Her dark hair reached down to her waist and her dark-brown eyes were large and entrancing. She knew it was desirable to be beautiful. People praised her, smiled at her and exclaimed over her eyes and her thick hair. The children in her class didn’t pick on her like they did on the boy with the sticking-out ears. But no one wanted to play wi
th her. They said she was weird. That her house stank.

  She’d never really fitted in. She’d always felt like an outsider among these people. Her little brother had been lucky. Lucky never to have to find out what it was like to grow up. She used to visit him in the graveyard. She’d sit there for a long time, gazing at the white cross, pulling up the grass around it and stroking the black plaque with his name on it.

  Her father lay buried beside her little brother and she visited him too. But it was becoming increasingly difficult to summon up the few memories she had of him. She could hardly picture his face anymore: it was lost in a mist. She couldn’t remember the shape of his nose or the colour of his eyes. But she would never forget his hand; her daddy’s big, rough hand. ‘Working hands,’ he used to say. She had a faint memory of what it had felt like when he hugged her. How she’d been engulfed in his arms, how his bearded cheek had rasped against her hair. The thing she remembered most vividly, though, was his voice. She could hear him talking, even though she could no longer recall his features.

  She could hear his voice amidst all the noise and also in her quieter moments.

  They were at the playground; both dressed the same, with their hair in matching plaits.

  ‘Hi, Elísabet,’ said Magnea when she noticed her. She glanced at Sara and they both grinned, as if they knew something Elísabet didn’t.

  Elísabet didn’t answer. She had resigned herself to being alone. Life was simpler when it was just her. But this conviction was belied by the way her heart missed a beat when they invited her to play with them. They’d whispered to each other for a while, before eventually turning to her and asking if she wanted to join them. Elísabet had trouble hiding her happiness.

  Later that evening she bounded up the steps, light as air, and collapsed exhausted into bed. She was asleep before she could even undress and didn’t wake up until morning.

  Tuesday, 5 December 2017

  It didn’t take Elma long to track Vilborg down once she got into work the next day. All she had to do was go back through the old school newspapers. It transpired that there had only been one Vilborg born in 1980 at Grundi School and her patronymic was Sæmundsdóttir. Elma typed her name into the search engine and found both a Facebook page and an entry in the telephone directory. The sight of Vilborg’s address elicited a silent groan from her: it wasn’t far from where she and Davíð used to live. She toyed with the idea of ringing her instead but concluded that, given the sensitive nature of the case, it would be better to talk to Vilborg in person. She dialled her number and Vilborg answered after the first ring. When Elma told her what it was about, Vilborg immediately agreed to see her. Elma grabbed the car keys.

  ‘Where are you off to?’ Hörður asked, meeting her in the doorway.

  ‘Just popping to the dentist’s,’ she lied, privately berating herself for not having come up with a more original excuse, but Hörður seemed to accept it without question. Elma hurried out of the building before he could see through her. She was a useless liar.

  Several minutes later, she put her foot down on the accelerator and watched Akranes receding in the rear-view mirror. The late-winter dawn was breaking and the shrivelled grass gleamed in the cold rays of the sun. Elma turned up the radio and sang along to the tune that was playing. She was still in high spirits from the evening before when she and Sævar had sat in Gamla kaupfélagið until closing time – which wasn’t actually that late since the bar closed at ten, but during that time they had talked nonstop. Perhaps the beer had helped to loosen her tongue because, once she’d got started, she had found she couldn’t stop, though she had avoided saying too much about Davíð because the pain was still too raw.

  They’d also discussed the case and she’d told him about Sara’s drawing, her conversation with Magnea and what Dagný had said about Vilborg. ‘When children are abused, the culprit is usually somebody close to them. Someone with easy access to them,’ Elma had said. ‘Don’t you find it an extraordinary coincidence that a sexual offence should have been committed during a party at Ása and Hendrik’s house? At Sara’s home? For all we know, it could have been the same person?’

  Sævar had been sceptical. ‘You have to take into account how many people used to go to Bjarni’s parties,’ he’d countered. ‘We’re talking dozens. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if your sister was right. I’m not saying the rape didn’t take place, I just find it more likely the perpetrator was someone her own age, who was as drunk as her.’ At that moment, the lights had come on and the waiter had started collecting the glasses from their table. They had walked home together, turning to lighter subjects. Elma couldn’t recall exactly what they’d talked about but she did remember laughing helplessly in a way she had hardly done for months.

  Vilborg was expecting her and opened the door of her basement flat as soon as Elma rang the bell. She was wearing a loose smock with an elaborate, swirly pattern. The flat reeked of incense but even that couldn’t disguise the sickly smell of cannabis. Vilborg invited Elma to sit down on a curry-yellow sofa and offered her some tea, which she accepted. After making two cups, Vilborg settled herself in a dark-green armchair and waited for Elma to begin.

  Elma noticed that the furniture was old and there was no sign of the typical designer items one would normally expect to find in an Icelandic home. Everything was a bit shabby, and Vilborg obviously had a penchant for decorating in bright colours, judging by the dark-green walls in the sitting room and wine-red ones in the hall.

  Elma decided to come straight to the point. ‘What happened that evening at Bjarni’s house?’ she asked.

  ‘I suppose you’ll have heard the stories?’ Vilborg said.

  ‘Actually, I’ve heard very little. Only that you accused someone at the party of assaulting you while you were asleep.’

  Vilborg put down her teacup and laughed bitterly. ‘Assaulting me? That’s putting it mildly. And I wasn’t as drunk as people say; I’d only had three beers but they went straight to my head. I was just sixteen, after all, and I’d only recently started drinking. I felt so dizzy that I went to lie down and must have fallen asleep. The next thing I remember is being woken up by a sharp pain. He’d pulled down my tights and forced himself inside me. I tried to scream but couldn’t make a sound. He was pinning me down with one arm and forcing my head into the pillow with the other.’

  ‘Did you see who it was?’

  ‘It was so dark that I never got a good look at him. After he’d finished, he left me lying there on the bed. I didn’t dare look up. I just lay there crying until I couldn’t bear it anymore and ran home.’

  ‘Do you think you could describe him?’

  ‘He was older than me. At least, that’s the impression I got, though I couldn’t see anything. He held something over my face – I think it was a woollen hat. He was heavy and it felt as if he had a beard – not much, just stubble, you know. None of the boys at the party were that heavily built so I thought … I thought it must have been an adult.’

  ‘An adult?’

  Vilborg nodded. ‘I told my parents. Not immediately – I couldn’t. But they saw the change in me and kept pestering me until I told them. In the end I admitted what had happened and who I thought had done it to me.’

  ‘And who did you think it was?’

  ‘Bjarni’s father, Hendrik,’ Vilborg said, after a moment’s hesitation. ‘Of course, I can’t be sure, but I met him later and he smelled the same. Of the same aftershave.’

  ‘What did your parents do?’

  ‘Dad went mental. He went storming round to Hendrik’s, demanding to know who had done it. I don’t know what happened but I don’t think it can have ended well because we moved away from Akranes shortly afterwards. Mum and Dad just said we could all do with a change of scene.’

  ‘Did you go for a medical examination the night it happened?’

  Vilborg shook her head. ‘It never occurred to me at the time. I just got straight into the bath and washed the horri
ble stuff off me. Later, of course I wished I’d gone to hospital so they could have caught the disgusting creep, but it was too late when I finally told people what had happened. Now I’ll probably never know for sure who it was.’ She reached for her teacup again. ‘Why do you think it’s connected to the woman who was found by the lighthouse? Had she been raped too?’

  ‘No, she hadn’t been raped. Not then, anyway.’

  ‘Oh? Had she been raped before?’

  Elma quickly shook her head. It wouldn’t do to say too much. ‘Do you think I could talk to your father? I’d like to know what passed between him and Hendrik.’

  Vilborg’s face grew sad. ‘No, sorry. Mum and Dad are both dead.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. My condolences.’

  ‘It’s all right. They were both getting on and they’d had long, happy lives.’

  Elma spent the drive home brooding over what she’d learnt. She was shaken by Vilborg’s story. If Hendrik really had been her rapist, it would come as a major shock to Akranes society. A man as powerful and well respected as him. But, of course, she would have to give him the benefit of doubt, since Vilborg’s accusation, although serious, was based on almost nothing more solid than the smell of aftershave. How many men had used that same aftershave? Nevertheless, this was yet another element linking Hendrik’s family to Elísabet’s death.

  Her thoughts went to Sara and Elísabet. Had the same man been responsible in all their cases? Of course, she couldn’t know if Sara had really been the victim of sexual abuse. After all, how much was it safe to deduce from a drawing by a six-year-old? It was different in Elísabet’s case as the photo was clear evidence of some level of abuse. And a lot of dubious types had had access to Elísabet’s house – far too many, in fact. Darkness fell as Elma reached the Hvalfjörður tunnel. She wondered what kind of person would be capable of taking another person’s life simply in order to protect their own reputation.