The Creak on the Stairs Read online

  Hörður snapped a few more pictures. ‘Perhaps there are fragments from the car around here. Forensics have scoured the area by the rocks where the body was found, but I’m not sure they’ve given the car park enough attention.’

  ‘They extended the search area quite a long way,’ Sævar pointed out. He straightened up from where he had been squatting over the tracks and scanned their surroundings. The area cordoned off by forensics stretched some way along the gravel road and down to the rocky shoreline around the two lighthouses. The technicians must have been working half the night to cover all that ground.

  The two men wandered around without speaking for a while, peering at the ground without finding anything. Hörður put an empty beer can in a plastic bag. The wintry sun could do little to mitigate the chilly breeze blowing from the north. A car approached along the gravel road. Sævar held up a hand to shield his eyes and made out a grey jeep with a man and woman in the front and two children in the back.

  ‘We won’t find anything here now,’ Hörður said. ‘Let’s get going.’

  Sævar nodded and got into the car. He looked back towards the two lighthouses. The family had climbed out of their jeep and were staring curiously at the roped-off area. The man was carrying a large camera and the woman was holding the hands of the boys, who couldn’t have been more than six or seven. By daylight the place had a tranquil, innocent air, but Sævar knew that once darkness fell it took on a creepier atmosphere. Not that he had ever been easily spooked. He was the down-to-earth type, who trusted in the evidence of his own eyes and nothing else. But even so he couldn’t help seeing the woman’s face every time he looked out towards the rocks.

  Elma had been sitting at her computer, gathering all the information she could find about Elísabet Hölludóttir. From what she had discovered so far, Elísabet had been born in Akranes and lived there as a child, attending Brekkubær School. In 1992 she had moved to Reykjavík with her mother, Halla Snæbjörnsdóttir, who had died of cancer that same year, leaving her daughter behind to be cared for by her sister, Guðrún Snæbjörnsdóttir. Elma looked up the aunt and saw that she lived in the Reykjavík suburb of Breiðholt. She noted down her phone number.

  Next, Elma rang Brekkubær School and asked them to email her a list of the children who were in Elísabet’s form during the years she was a pupil there. Wondering what could have brought Elísabet back to Akranes, she’d thought perhaps it had had something to do with one of her former schoolmates. The helpful secretary sent over a scan of the file within minutes of her hanging up. The form had been called 1.IG, after the initials of the teacher, Ingibjörn Grétarsson, who had taught at the school throughout Elísabet’s time there. Elma tried typing 1.IG into the Akranes Museum of Photography website and several images popped up, including a group shot of the entire class. Other photos showed the children engaged in a variety of activities, but frustratingly few of the captions included any names. Excited six-year-olds on their way to school, wearing over-sized anoraks and big backpacks; kids building a tower out of wooden bricks; two girls sitting at a square table, colouring in pictures. The caption of this last photo said: ‘Pupils of Brekkubær School. Photo taken 1989’. One of the girls was looking straight into the lens with a happy smile; the other had strikingly dark hair and solemn brown eyes.

  Elma peered at the picture, then held up a photo of the adult Elísabet to the computer screen. It wasn’t the one provided by the pathologist but another, given to her by Elísabet’s husband Eiríkur; a headshot, presumably a passport photo. There could be no doubt that the little girl on screen and the woman in the photo were the same person. Two pairs of arrestingly dark-brown eyes stared back at Elma.

  She found two more images of Elísabet on the website. One was a group photo in which the children had been lined up in the classroom with their teacher beside them. The other showed a group of children in aprons, kneading dough. Four of them were splaying out flour-covered fingers. It was the only picture in which Elísabet was smiling.

  Elma’s thoughts went to the little boy who had emerged from his bedroom to go to the toilet when they were talking to Eiríkur. He had been the image of his mother, with his dark hair and eyebrows, differing from her only in that his expression had been far less grave. Elísabet didn’t appear to have been a very cheerful child, but then you couldn’t really judge from pictures. Perhaps the photographer had been a stranger, someone she found intimidating. Many children were shy about having their picture taken. Elma remembered that she hadn’t been particularly keen on it herself. The photos in her parents’ thick albums almost invariably showed a little girl with a sulky expression, while her sister beside her was beaming like a child model. The only shots in which Elma was smiling were those when she had been taken unawares, before she’d had time to put on a scowl.

  Elma wondered if she should try to track down Elísabet’s old teacher but decided that it could wait. Talking to her husband and anyone else she had interacted with recently was far more urgent than interviewing people from her past. Although Eiríkur’s shock and grief had appeared genuine, murders were often committed by partners or other close family members, and there weren’t many to choose from in Elísabet’s case. None of her close relatives were alive apart from her aunt Guðrún, with whom she’d had little contact, if Eiríkur was to be believed. For the moment, the police weren’t aware of any other family members.

  Elma picked up the phone and dialled Guðrún’s number. A hoarse voice answered almost immediately. ‘Hello, is that Guðrún Snæbjörnsdóttir?’ Elma asked.

  ‘Yes, that’s me?’ It sounded like a question.

  ‘My name’s Elma and I’m calling from Akranes Police Station. I wondered if I could possibly meet you tomorrow for a chat?’

  There was a brief silence at the other end. ‘If it’s about Elísabet, I’ve got very little to say. I haven’t seen her for years, not since she walked out of here without so much as saying goodbye, let alone thank you.’

  ‘Please accept my condolences for the loss of your niece,’ Elma said, in spite of the cold indifference in Guðrún’s voice. She hesitated, then said: ‘If you don’t mind my asking, how did you know I was ringing about Elísabet? Since you say you hadn’t seen much of each other in recent years…’

  ‘We certainly hadn’t,’ Guðrún said loudly. ‘But her husband still had the manners to ring and let me know. At least my niece had the sense to marry well – that Eiríkur seems a very decent man. But I can’t see why you want to meet me: I’ve nothing to tell.’

  Elma paused. ‘Nevertheless, it would be good if I could come round. I wouldn’t take up much of your time. Would eleven o’clock tomorrow morning work for you?’

  Again there was a silence, before Guðrún said grudgingly: ‘Well, I don’t know what good it’ll do you, but you can come round. I’m busy until two, though, so you’ll have to come after that.’ She broke into a rattling cough.

  Elma thanked her and rang off. It looked as if Eiríkur had been right about the strained relationship between aunt and niece. She put her finger against the second number he had supplied, which belonged to Aldís Helgadóttir, the only friend Elísabet had kept in touch with.

  The phone rang and rang, and Elma was about to give up and end the call when a breathless voice answered.

  ‘Yes,’ the woman said brusquely, as if the call had interrupted something important. But her tone changed as soon as Elma explained what it was about. ‘Of course I can meet you. God, if there’s anything I can do…’ She trailed off and Elma thought she heard a sob.

  ‘Tomorrow, just after noon?’ she asked, when Aldís didn’t say anything.

  ‘I’ve got a meeting at one, so midday would be good.’

  Elma said goodbye after taking down the address of the hotel where Aldís worked as a manager. Then she sat there, phone in hand, thinking for a minute, before dialling the number of the National Register. An electronic voice informed her she would be put through to a customer-service repr
esentative as soon as one was available. She waited for several minutes before her call was finally answered, then she was put through to a woman who introduced herself as Auður.

  ‘Let’s see,’ said Auður, and Elma heard the rattle of a keyboard. ‘Yes, here it is. The address the mother and daughter were registered at in Akranes was number eight, Krókatún.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Elma said. ‘I also wondered if you could possibly check if she ever had a patronymic and, if so, when she changed her name.’ It had struck her as unusual that, where most Icelanders took their second names from their father, Elísabet had gone by her matronymic, ‘Halla’s daughter’.

  ‘Let’s see.’ Again, Elma heard the sound of typing. ‘Elísabet Hölludóttir never changed her second name. She’s registered under her mother’s name on her birth certificate. Her father was called Arnar Helgi Árnason. He died in 1989.’

  ‘Is there any record of how he died?’

  ‘All it says here is “accidental death”, but it shouldn’t be hard to find out the details by other means.’

  Elma thanked her and rang off. Turning to the computer again, she opened the website of the newspaper archives and typed in Elísabet’s father’s name. The report came up almost instantly. It was dated 1989. Two men were reported missing after their fishing boat had sunk in a storm not far from the entrance to Akranes harbour on the evening of 16 February. A wave was thought to have broken over the boat, causing the five-tonne vessel to capsize with both crew members on board. Apparently, an area of low pressure had caused a sudden, unexpected deterioration in the weather, and conditions had been severe on the shallow coastal fishing grounds and in Faxaflói Bay. The report stated that Arnar was survived by his common-law wife and daughter.

  Elma wrote the details in her notepad, then leant back in her chair. Elísabet had only been six years old when her father died, and it looked as if her parents had been cohabiting. So why had she been named after her mother instead of her father in the usual Icelandic manner?

  Akranes 1990

  The frost bit into her cheeks as she waded through the snow, trying to keep up with her mother. When she looked down she was momentarily dazzled; the snow was so incredibly white and sparkled in the sun like glitter. But it was bitterly cold too and it collected inside her boots, where it melted, soaking her tights. Raising her face to the sky, she put out her tongue, trying to catch the big flakes that were floating down lazily in the still weather.

  ‘What are you doing? Hurry up!’ her mother snapped.

  Elísabet ran after her. Her mother was in a bad mood; her eyes were small and red.

  A few snowflakes found their way into the neck of Elísabet’s anorak and she felt them trickling down her spine.

  ‘Mummy, I’m cold,’ she complained, then immediately regretted it. Her mother had little patience for whining and, turning, she seized her arm and started pulling her along. Elísabet tripped and fell in the snow but, instead of stopping, her mother kept going, almost yanking her arm out of its socket as she dragged her along the ground. Elísabet could feel the tears squeezing out of the corners of her eyes but fought to hold them back. She didn’t dare cry. Her mother had been in a foul mood recently. Often, Elísabet hadn’t a clue what she’d done wrong: the blows arrived completely without warning.

  Her nose was running and she tried to wipe it on the sleeve of her anorak with her free arm. She hoped nobody would see them. She could just imagine what the other kids at school would say if they saw her now, soaked to the skin, with snot leaking out of her nose. It was all her daddy’s fault, she thought. If he hadn’t gone out on the boat, her mother wouldn’t be so angry and everything would be better.

  They stopped outside a red-and-white block of flats and went to the middle entrance, where her mother rang one of the bells. There was no answer. Her mother didn’t wait long before pressing the button again, holding it down for a long time. Drips were falling from Elísabet’s hair down her red anorak.

  ‘Yes,’ a man’s voice answered gruffly.

  ‘It’s me,’ her mother said in a low voice.

  Apparently the man knew her mother, because there was a loud buzzing. Her mother opened the door, then paused in the gap to look back. Bending down to Elísabet, she fixed her eyes on hers.

  ‘Stay here,’ she said firmly. Elísabet nodded and sniffed. Then the door slammed shut and her mother disappeared. She sat down to wait.

  While she was sitting there, she saw Magnea coming out of the neighbouring stairwell with her mother. Magnea was in her class at school but they weren’t friends. Elísabet sniffed hard, clenching her toes to get the blood flowing. Mother and daughter went straight over to a large, new-looking SUV and climbed in – no wading through snowdrifts for Magnea. She probably never got freezing toes. Elísabet watched enviously as the other girl put on her seatbelt, then sat there, cuddling a blonde doll on her lap.

  Elísabet promised herself then and there that when she was grown up she would have a big car like that so her children would never have to suffer from frozen toes.

  The day had passed with aching slowness. Magnea sat watching the clock on the wall, waiting for the hands to creep round. The children, sensing her indifference, were talking louder than usual and paying less attention to their work, but she couldn’t be bothered to raise her voice to restore discipline. Instead, she sat at her desk, staring absently out of the window at the playing field, the sports hall with its mismatched roof panels, and the sea beyond. Visibility was clear enough today to make out Reykjavík on the other side of the bay. From time to time she dropped her eyes to the papers in front of her, read the simple answers and marked them right or wrong.

  She laid a hand on her belly. It was still flat. No one would have guessed that there was a life growing inside it, however tiny. As tiny as a bean. She smiled to herself. They had been trying for so long, and now, all of a sudden, as if by magic, it had happened. It couldn’t be a coincidence. She must have done the right thing. Somehow she must have done something right.

  ‘Magnea, I’ve finished.’ Agla was standing in front of her wearing a smarmy smile and holding out her white exercise book. She was the pupil most likely to sit there quietly obeying instructions and doing her tasks without complaint. Magnea took the exercise book with a perfunctory smile.

  ‘What should I do now?’ the girl asked after a moment, puzzled at receiving no further instructions.

  Magnea sighed under her breath. ‘Just sit down and read until the others have finished.’

  Agla nodded obediently and returned to her seat, where she pulled out a book that looked far too thick for a nine-year-old and began to read. Magnea shook her head. Her own daughter was unlikely to turn out like that if she took after her parents. Of course, she didn’t actually know the baby’s sex yet but she was sure it would be a girl. A girl who was bound to be more like Gréta and Anna, who sat side by side, whispering together whenever they thought their teacher wasn’t looking.

  Magnea glanced round the class. Groups like this soon established an internal pecking order. She could point to the handful of children the others looked up to, the natural leaders, who dictated what the others should do and what was or wasn’t cool. Most of the rest fell into the category of follower – the children who usually looked up to the leaders with admiration. Then there were the outsiders, the ones nobody wanted to be seen with, who were often the butt of whispers and bullying. Like Þórður, who was staring out of the window, in trousers that were too short, exposing his bony shins. Or Agla, who sat there immersed in her book when she wasn’t glancing up to try and catch Magnea’s eye.

  Yes, it was a cruel world, even for nine-year-olds. Magnea was perfectly aware of the position she herself had occupied in the pecking order at school. She had been at the top. How she had revelled in her status and loved being in control. She missed that sense of power now. Life had become increasingly complicated over the years. She had watched impotently as her old power gradually slipped through h
er fingers and people became increasingly indifferent to who she had once been and what she had been capable of doing.

  She stole a peek at the clock again. The day was almost over and she had a meeting after work; a meeting she had long been looking forward to.

  A thermos of coffee and three mugs had been placed in the middle of the table, together with a basket containing piparkökur neatly arranged on a red napkin, which reminded Elma that Christmas was just around the corner. If this had been America they’d have had doughnuts, but here they had to make do with gingerbread biscuits, she thought, letting one dissolve in her mouth with the hot coffee. She was starving as she hadn’t had time to go out and get lunch, and for once there had been no pastries in the kitchen. Hörður still wasn’t back, though it was past five. Elma was gradually learning that, although her new boss possessed a number of virtues, punctuality wasn’t one of them.

  ‘Sorry! Apologies for keeping you waiting,’ Hörður said when he finally arrived. ‘I’ve just had the press on the phone.’ Elma saw that Sævar was having trouble hiding a grin, but Hörður carried on oblivious: ‘Eiríkur’s employer has confirmed that he got into work at nine a.m. and left at half past four. In other words, there’s nothing to suggest that he lied about that.’

  ‘But that only covers Friday,’ Sævar chipped in. ‘If he found out that Elísabet had been seeing someone else, either later that day or at the weekend…’

  ‘Exactly,’ Hörður said, before continuing with what he had been planning to say. Elma noticed that he had made a neat list of bullet points in preparation for the meeting. ‘None of the local garages say they’ve had any cars brought in with suspicious damage, either to the front or the back. But as Sævar and I spotted some deep brake marks on the gravel road in front of the lighthouse, I rang forensics in Reykjavík and they’re going to go over the area again tomorrow. So it’ll remain blocked off for now, and the officers on duty will just have to make sure that no one enters the area.’