The Creak on the Stairs Read online

  Elísabet’s shoes were old and had once been white but were now more like grey or brown. They still had red stripes on them, though. Red was her favourite colour. She had got the shoes from the women who had come round the day before with some bags of clothes. The backpack had come from them too. Elísabet had been very impressed with it. Admittedly, it had a broken shoulder strap but that was all right because one of the helpful women had sewn it back on again. It was bright red with black seams and lots of pockets. But Elísabet had to admit that the other girl’s bag was way cooler. It looked brand-new as well, like her shoes.

  The teacher, an older man with small glasses, told the children to sit down in front of him in a carpeted corner of the classroom. He started by reading out their names, and the children had to answer when it was their turn. While they were answering one after the other, Elísabet noticed two of the girls whispering and staring at her. Instantly guessing what they had seen, she tugged the sleeves of her jumper down over the bleeding sores on her fingers. She felt herself grow hot all over, and when the teacher called out her name, she couldn’t make a sound. ‘Elísabet?’ the teacher said again, surveying the class. ‘Yes,’ she managed to croak, and the teacher nodded and put a tick by her name. Elísabet lowered her eyes to the grey carpet, oblivious to what the teacher was saying. When she finally raised her head, she saw the shy girl watching her. As their eyes met, the other girl smiled, showing milk-white teeth.

  The girl’s name was Sara, and when she smiled at her Elísabet knew that everything was going to be all right.

  The building was almost empty, but Hendrik was still sitting in his office, contemplating his surroundings with a sense of satisfaction. He relished having all this space to himself, where he could close the door and even take a nap when he felt like it. Where he could work in peace, among the good furniture and expensive paintings, with an uninterrupted view of the ocean; nothing but blue as far as the eye could see. Though in fact it was black out there now – the Icelandic winter was so relentlessly dark. He leant back, his leather chair creaking, and stretched his legs.

  Although he had finished the day’s tasks, he couldn’t face going home just yet. It was a pleasure to sit here alone and undisturbed for a while. And there was nothing waiting for him at home but Ása. Besides, this office would soon belong to Bjarni. Of course, it was high time. Hendrik had no intention of withdrawing entirely from the firm, despite having reached retirement age, but he would have to resign himself to handing over the management to his son.

  Hendrik took a deep breath, then sat upright again. He heard a door opening. Footsteps. It must be the cleaners. Or cleaner, rather: the Asian woman who came in every day, after hours. He stood up, went into the kitchen and found the woman with her back to him, bending over and wringing out the mop over a bucket.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said blandly, reaching for a mug on the top shelf of the cupboard.

  The woman returned his greeting in broken Icelandic, avoiding his eye. She was small and timid, like most of them. It was as if they instinctively recognised power when they saw it. Smiling to himself, he waited patiently for the coffee to percolate, his eyes resting absent-mindedly on the woman as she carried on mopping the floor. Then he took a seat at the table and unhurriedly drank his coffee.

  He had certainly found his niche in life. In fact, you could say he’d had the good luck to be born in the right niche. Growing up in a small rural community had turned out to be a blessing in his case. He knew most of the locals. There were only around seven thousand inhabitants in the town even now, and the population had been much smaller in his youth. He could hardly go out to the shops without having to greet half the people he met. Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he had given in to the urge to leave and try his luck somewhere else. But he generally came to the same conclusion: nowhere else would he have managed to make as good a life for himself as here. He’d been popular at school, a good student and a good sportsman too; a promising footballer, though it hadn’t led to anything, but then he’d never been particularly interested in that sort of fame. While he enjoyed the comradeship associated with the sport, he wasn’t prepared to make the kind of commitment necessary to achieve success as a footballer. Nor had it ever crossed his mind to abandon his local team. Akranes was his town. Here he was popular and well regarded. That was the advantage of living in a small community; those who had a good reputation reaped the benefits. Others were not so lucky.

  He finished his coffee and got to his feet. His entire life up until now had been close to perfect. His schooldays had been carefree and fun. He had met Ása when he was in his mid-twenties and she three years his junior. As a young woman she had been a pretty, sensitive creature, who allowed him to wear the trousers. Women like that were hard to find these days.

  Everything would have been perfect if it hadn’t been for the little girl. She haunted him like a shadow. If he so much as thought about her, it was as if the wind had been knocked out of him – not that he let it show. To the outside world he was strong; powerful. But when dusk fell, the darkness took up residence in his soul and nothing seemed to matter anymore.

  Elma drove past the quay where she had walked earlier that day. The boats that had been rocking gently against the dockside then were now being tossed violently back and forth by the churning waves. Turning right, she drove past the white buildings of the fish factory that had recently closed down, with the loss of so many jobs, then swung off the main road onto a gravel track. The streetlights illuminated part of the way but she had to drive the final stretch in darkness, guided only by her headlights. Breiðin, the westernmost point of Akranes, stretched out into the sea before her, the old lighthouse rising from the rocks near the very tip.

  Elma drove to the end of the track and pulled up beside the police vehicles that were already parked there, along with an ambulance, a big four-by-four and a black BMW with its engine running. A yellow plastic tape marked ‘Police’ hung fluttering wildly across the car park by the new lighthouse, and in the distance she could glimpse members of the forensics team at work on the rocky point.

  As she buttoned up her coat, she examined the smart new lighthouse that towered over the car park. The old one looked shabby and dilapidated by comparison. Almost sinister. Elma felt a familiar shiver run down her spine. She had been out there more times than she could remember, first as a little girl with her parents, and later as a teenager with friends who used to do their best to scare the hell out of each other with ghost stories. There was something so eerie about a building that had once performed such an important role but now stood derelict, abandoned to the elements.

  As soon as he saw her arrive, Sævar came over to meet her, his black down jacket zipped up to the neck, his dark hair hidden under a thick woollen hat.

  ‘Forensics are examining the scene,’ he told her, sniffing, his nose running in the cold. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the gale.

  ‘Have they been here long?’ Elma asked. She’d driven back to Akranes as fast as she dared, her mother a bag of nerves in the passenger seat beside her, repeatedly grabbing her arm with terrified gasps.

  ‘No, they’re just setting up,’ Sævar told her. ‘They had to be called out from Reykjavík too.’

  ‘Do we know anything yet?’

  ‘It’s a woman. Aged somewhere between thirty and forty. The officers who responded to the callout spotted the injuries as soon as they reached the scene, which is why we’ve got the whole shooting match out here now. That’s all I know.’ He nodded in the direction of the BMW. ‘It was them that found the body. I told them to hang around so we could have a chat. I didn’t want to do it alone. Hörður’s only just got here as well. He was spending the weekend at his summer house in Skorradalur.’

  Sævar walked over to the BMW and, bending down, tapped on the window. The door opened and a lanky boy stepped out. His dark hair flopped either side of his face, and he was wearing ripped skinny jeans and a baggy, pale-g
rey hoodie pulled up over his head. His hands were buried deep in the pockets of his black-leather jacket. The girl stayed in the car.

  ‘Won’t your friend come out and talk to us too?’ asked Sævar.

  ‘She’s cold,’ the boy answered. ‘She hasn’t stopped shivering since…’

  Sævar bent down and tapped the window again. The girl, who was sitting staring into space, jumped as if she’d been in a trance. She looked up, hesitated, then opened the door and got out. Her blonde hair hung right down her back over her thin jacket. She was hugging herself and burying her chin in her big scarf in a futile attempt to keep out the cold.

  ‘You lot had better hurry up before she’s washed away,’ the boy said, waving towards the old lighthouse.

  Sævar opened the rear door of the police car, ignoring this unsolicited advice, and gestured to the two youngsters to get in.

  ‘What were you doing out here?’ Elma asked once they were all in the car, twisting round in the passenger seat to study them.

  The boy lowered his eyes, then glanced up shiftily as he replied: ‘Us? We were just sightseeing, you know. Checking out the lighthouse.’

  ‘Were you alone?’ Sævar asked.

  The boy nodded, shooting a look at the girl, who just sniffed without saying anything.

  ‘So, Reynir, you weren’t aware of anyone else around – no cars, nothing like that?’

  ‘No, nothing.’ Reynir shook his head emphatically.

  ‘I thought I heard something, though,’ the girl said, suddenly finding her voice. ‘That’s why I climbed up the stairs and that’s when I … when I saw her.’

  Sævar and Elma exchanged glances. ‘What sort of noise did you hear?’ Sævar asked.

  ‘A thud. Like someone was upstairs in the lighthouse. But there was nobody there,’ she replied, shuddering at the memory.

  ‘Yeah, we only spotted her when we got to the top,’ Reynir added. ‘That is, Arna thought she saw something. I didn’t.’

  ‘What was it you saw?’ Elma asked the girl. ‘It must have been dark, and you can’t see very far in these conditions. Could you really make out the body from up there?’

  ‘Just the hair. I thought it was moving but that was probably the waves.’ The girl’s voice was so low that Elma had to lean closer to hear her over the noise of the wind that was walloping the car windows. ‘I thought it was an animal. The fur of an animal.’

  ‘And what did you do then?’ Sævar asked.

  ‘I just wanted to see if I could, you know, help it or something,’ Arna said.

  When she showed no signs of continuing, Reynir took over:

  ‘We didn’t have to get that close before we realised it wasn’t an animal.’

  ‘Did you touch anything on the rocks?’ Sævar asked.

  ‘No, we just got the hell out of there and called the cops. It’s not the kind of thing you want to touch, you know.’ The boy made a face.

  The girl remained silent, her attention focused on scratching at the fabric of the seatback with her finger. Sævar looked at Elma, then took down their phone numbers and told them to go home and get warm.

  Elma watched them drive away. ‘Shouldn’t we have kept them here a bit longer in case they were involved somehow? Do you think there’s any chance they were?’

  ‘Well, the woman’s body was half submerged,’ Sævar said, ‘but their clothes were perfectly dry. So I didn’t think there was any reason to keep them here.’

  Elma nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘The body’s over there, right out on the point,’ Sævar said. ‘We’ll have a bit of a scramble to get to it.’

  Elma set off after him, almost losing her balance on the slippery rocks and inadvertently grabbing hold of him.

  As they got closer, she spotted Hörður standing a little way off, his hands deep in his pockets, watching forensics at work. The technicians were dressed in blue overalls and one of them was holding up an LED light to illuminate the area. Under normal circumstances they would have mounted the light on a tripod, but Elma doubted this was possible on the rough terrain. Besides, the wind would have snatched it away in a matter of seconds.

  The body lay at the foot of the rocks, caught between two boulders. Forensics had made no attempt to shield it with plastic sheeting or to erect a tent over it, presumably since it wasn’t visible from the shore unless someone was right out on the point. Elma couldn’t see the woman’s face, just her hair, which was loose and swaying with the movement of the waves. She was wearing a black coat but her lower half was submerged in the water. Elma was so absorbed in examining the body that she jumped when a hand was laid on her shoulder.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,’ Hörður said. ‘It’s not looking good. Seems like we’re going to have quite a job on our hands.’

  ‘Is there anything suspicious about it?’ Elma asked, trying to ignore the cold. Her thin coat provided no protection and her hair was whipping around wildly in the wind. She looked enviously at Hörður, whose curly locks were neatly confined under his fur hat.

  ‘It certainly looks like it, yes,’ he replied. ‘Unless she had a bloody bad fall.’

  The technicians turned the body over, revealing a swollen face. The woman’s eyes were closed and her skin was white, apart from patches of blue discolouration on her face and neck. Elma had seen enough corpses by now to know that the bruising was caused by lividity, or the pooling of blood after death, which meant she must have been dead for some time. One of the technicians brushed the dark hair aside, revealing conspicuous contusions on her throat.

  ‘It doesn’t look as if she fell,’ Elma observed quietly.

  ‘She can’t have been in the water long, judging by the state of her body,’ Hörður said. ‘The sea fleas are pretty voracious around here.’

  ‘Do you suppose there’s any chance of finding evidence?’ Elma peered around at the wet rocks, trying in vain to brush her hair from her eyes.

  ‘It could prove tricky,’ Hörður said. ‘I’m afraid the location isn’t going to make life any easier for forensics.’

  After they’d been watching for a while, one of the technicians came over. ‘We want to move the body as soon as possible,’ he told them. ‘There’s no point trying to conduct any further examination out here. We need to shift her before the tide comes in.’

  Some of the men brought over a body bag and helped to lift the woman carefully inside it. Once this was done, they set off, carrying her inert weight between them, picking their way precariously over the slimy rocks to the ambulance. Hörður, Elma and Sævar followed. The LED light had been moved, plunging the rocky point into darkness.

  ‘Can you say anything else at this stage?’ Hörður asked one of the technicians as they were making their way back towards the car park.

  ‘I’m guessing she hadn’t been there long,’ the man replied. ‘Her body must have been hidden by the sea and rocks for at least part of the time. Rigor mortis would have set in quickly as a result of the cold conditions and lasted longer than usual, so my guess is about twenty-four hours. The lividity on her face and neck indicates that she was lying face down the whole time. I don’t think she’s shifted or been washed up here from somewhere else. We’ll have to let the pathologist establish the cause of death, but of course the marks on her neck suggest that she was dead before she ended up in the sea. One thing’s for sure: it was no drowning.’

  ‘Were there any other injuries?’ Elma asked.

  ‘Her left leg’s broken. That’s definite. And there’s a cut on the right side of her head that could indicate a fall or a blow. It’s impossible to say which at this stage or to state the actual cause of death.’

  ‘Did she have any ID on her?’ Hörður asked.

  ‘No, we haven’t found any clues to her identity,’ the man said. ‘Or anything of interest on the rocks around here either. The question now is how large an area we need to search. Seeing as there are a number of factors suggesting that she didn’t die of natural causes, w
e’ll need to cordon off a larger area.’ They stopped in front of the new lighthouse, and the man turned to survey the scene. Judging by his expression, he wasn’t looking forward to the task ahead. ‘We’ll be here for a while yet,’ he added, wiping his forehead with his blue sleeve. ‘I’m going to call out more officers from Reykjavík. There’s nothing else for it.’

  ‘Could she have been a tourist?’ Elma asked, watching as the technician got into one of the nearby cars. ‘Seeing as you don’t recognise her.’

  ‘Maybe…’ Sævar furrowed his brow. ‘But I find it unlikely, though I don’t really know why. I can’t put my finger on it but somehow she doesn’t look like a foreign tourist.’

  ‘It’s impossible to tell at this stage whether she’s a foreigner or an Icelander, but you can be sure she’s not from Akranes,’ Hörður said. ‘I’d recognise her if she was.’

  They were interrupted by a sudden squall that whipped up the waves, thickening the mist of spray with cold raindrops.

  ‘Looks like we’re in for a downpour,’ Hörður said. ‘I don’t think we can do any more here for now. Let’s get indoors before the wind really picks up.’

  He considered the scene. The forensics team was still combing the area, and Elma noticed from the flickering lights in the windows that some of the technicians must be busy inside the old lighthouse. The ambulance drove off and they watched until it was out of sight. Elma had long ago given up trying to hold down her hair, which had been blown into a salty tangle, and her coat was now wet through.

  ‘See you back at the station,’ Hörður called as he climbed into the big four-by-four. Elma got into the car she had borrowed from her parents and switched on the ignition, rubbing her hands together and turning the heater on full blast. Water trickled down her face and the car shook, buffeted by gusts of wind. Although the seat soon started warming up, Elma knew it would be a long while before the chill left her body. It was getting on for 10.00 p.m. and the darkness beyond the lights was impenetrable as she peered towards the point, past the old lighthouse. The spot where the woman had been lying was now awash, the surf breaking over the rocks, no doubt snatching away anything loose that remained.