A Place To Bury Strangers, page 5
He would keep his mouth shut and listen to what she had to say and then perhaps later on at some point he would ask her what he had done to deserve such an honour. Or maybe not. He had learnt a long time ago to never question the good things in life. Sometimes you just had to accept that certain things were simply meant to be. This included the bad stuff too but especially the good stuff. If you started worrying about where that was coming from you would take all the fun out of life. Nína motioned for him to take a seat next to her just as the door behind them opened again and Ævar Rafnsson walked into the room. The expression on his face was difficult to pick. He didn’t look particularly happy about anything but there was an air of smugness about him too. He gave Nína a withering look which she completely ignored and then sat down opposite them. While he waited patiently for Nína to finish whatever it was she was doing on her laptop Ævar pretended to make a few handwritten notes himself and then cleared his throat.
‘Knut Vigeland, you are under arrest for the attempted murder of an Icelandic police officer on Öskjuhlíð last night and the murder of an unidentified individual on a building site on Einholt several hours earlier. You do not have to make a statement just yet but is there anything you would like to say at this point?’
Nína stopped what she was doing on the laptop and looked up at Ævar before turning to face Knut. She could tell by the smile on the big Norwegian’s face that he did not have anything he wanted to say at this particular moment in time.
CHAPTER NINE
Monday 2nd February
Jón Páll lent back in his chair, looked across his desk at Svandís and rested his hands on his chest. He laced his fingers together and tried to put on his best non-judgemental face even though he couldn’t help but wonder what the hell was wrong with her. He had seen her in a bad way many times before but today she looked as pathetic and frightened as he could ever remember. She was holding her side as though it was really sore but kept insisting she was fine and refused to let him examine her. When he’d asked her what was wrong she’d lied and told him that she’d pulled a muscle. From the way she was grimacing she had done considerably more than just pull a muscle but if she wasn’t going to let him touch her then there was next to nothing he could do to help. She no longer trusted him but she still came to see him each and every time she hit rock bottom. She had been fighting a heroin addiction for close to five years now and in that time he had seen her try to give it up thirty maybe forty times. Her problem was that no matter how much she insisted she wanted to stop using the drug she really didn’t. She loved it. She loved the chase around town to find a supply even if it was below freezing and it took her all night. She loved the feeling when she finally got that little plastic bag in her hand and she loved the pressure and the pin-prick penetration of the needle as it slid through her skin’s nerve endings and into her vein. More than anything she was a needle addict. As addicted to the sensation and the pain of the cold metal as she was to the drug itself. She was never going to be able to quit. And now here she was again looking up at him with those sad watery blue eyes of hers.
‘Why do you continue to come here, Svandís, when you won’t let me help you?’
‘You can help me if you’d just listen to what I’m saying.’
Jón Páll let out an exasperated sigh and sat upright again.
‘You know as well as I do that I can’t prescribe you drugs just because you happen to think it’s a good idea. If there’s something wrong and you genuinely need painkillers then you’re going to have to let me examine you.’
He waited for a reply of some kind but all she did was grit her teeth and stare at him. Jón Páll smiled and held his hands out to signal that they were done as far as he was concerned.
‘That’s it?’ she asked.
‘Without the proper procedures being followed I cannot simply prescribe medicines to anyone who wants them. I’m a doctor not a dealer. As you know I have a reputation built on helping young people in your position and it’s something I’ve been very successful at. This has not been achieved by handing out drugs like lollies. You may not see it at the moment but I’m doing you a favour. You will only succeed in getting yourself addicted to something else. The problem lies in your need to fill the void in your life with yet another void. The void of self-loathing with the void of addiction. There are, surprisingly enough, people who still love you. Let them in before it’s too late.’
The tears that had been threatening to come for some time now spilled over and down her cheeks. She rubbed them away with the back of her sleeve and spat across the desk at him.
‘You sick old fuck. If people knew what you really did with the girls who come in here looking for help you wouldn’t be so popular any more. I do what I do because I don’t have a choice not because I want to. Do you think I enjoy coming here and begging for help? Snivelling in here like a bitch with its tail between its legs asking you for a favour and being told to go fuck myself.’
Jón Páll couldn’t help but smile a little but soon regained his composure.
‘That’s right, you can wipe that fucking smile off your face too. Those days are over, trust me. I’m never going to be that desperate again. Not ever.’
Jón Páll’s face dropped as his façade cracked and finally gave way.
‘Don’t get all high and mighty with me. It doesn’t suit you. Even less than spitting across the room like a common whore. And let’s not forget that that’s exactly what you are these days. If it’s not me you’re fucking for a fix it’ll be someone else. Either way you’ll be paying your way to that land of twisted dreams of yours on your back. That cheap and nasty little habit of yours has made you cheap and nasty. Very, very cheap and extremely fucking nasty.’
Svandís sat in silence and looked down at her hands. There were scratch marks on her forearms where she had taken the frustrations of daily life out on her skin. Her wrists itched constantly for no good reason she could think of other than she was getting sick without the drugs that her body demanded. They didn’t even make her feel happy any more. Those days were long gone. The best they could do now was to stop her from going mad and they weren’t going to do that for much longer either. Her fingernails dug into her skin. It was as if she was trying to tear the flesh from her bones every time she reached under the table and scratched. If she didn’t get something to calm her down soon she would rip open the skin and find herself with an infection which would mean going to hospital and having to do some very awkward explaining to the staff. They would try to keep her in bed and off drugs and she would lose her mind if they did that to her again. She hated withdrawal more than anything else she had ever experienced. Even more than sleeping with men she loathed and who disgusted her. She looked across the table at her once benevolent doctor. If she was going to sleep with someone she hated then it would be for heroin and not some half-arsed drugstore imitation. She needed that feeling of the floor opening up beneath her and swallowing her whole. There wasn’t a pill in the world that could replicate the real thing.
‘You’re a fucking prick,’ she said barely loudly enough for him to hear. ‘Do you know what I have to go through to get this stuff? Do you have the faintest idea?’
‘Yes I do, but this is the life you have chosen.’
Svandís stood up and tried to straighten the kinks out of her clothes and her posture at the same time. Both attempts were unsuccessful. She hadn’t bothered doing laundry in something like a month and her back was permanently stooped from the load that her lousy life-decisions had given her to carry around. She tried hard to give herself as much dignity as she could muster but it was a losing battle and the smile that started to creep back across Jón Páll’s face said it all. Her stubbornness would prevent her from caving to his sordid demands but it would not prevent her from taking the first job that came her way as soon as she’d left his clinic. She had run out of options. Without heroin in the next twenty-four hours she would start tearing her hair out by the roots. The dependency on the drug she had developed had blossomed from a small-time habit into the poisonous core that her life now revolved around. Her orbit was shrinking daily and it was becoming obvious that at some point in the very near future she would crash and burn. It was only a matter of when and where.
‘Next time you see me I’ll be the one laughing not you. No matter how bad things get I won’t be stooping to your level again,’ she spouted.
‘Stooping to my level? The next time our paths cross again, Svandís,’ Jón Páll said with just a hint of a sigh, ‘it will be the way it always is when we see each other these days. You’ll be begging me for some unreasonable favour that only a fool would agree to and I’ll be telling you no over and over again. If you could only see yourself as others do you might just understand how incredibly tedious you’ve become.’
‘I’ll never ask you for anything again as long as I live,’ she said and walked out of his office for the last time.
CHAPTER TEN
Friday 6th February
Janko could not believe his ears. One of his dealers had been found dead on a construction site in the city centre not twenty minutes ago. Óli Þór wasn’t exactly the shiniest penny in the jam jar but it was still difficult to imagine what he could have done to piss someone off this much. One of Janko’s police friends had just sent him a text message to let him know the fate that had befallen his dim-witted friend so he would hear about it before he saw it on RUV’s late night news. His contact had attached a photo of the crime scene as an added bonus and it wasn’t pretty to say the least. What Janko found really upsetting though was what had been painted on the wall just behind Óli Þór’s charred corpse. He hadn’t spent too much time in Norway but he knew enough of the language to understand the black letters spray-painted across the fire-damaged wall – ‘Jeg har funnet stedet hvor du begraver fremmede.’
‘I have found the place where you bury strangers.’
Someone was taunting him. Someone who knew his secret. He had no idea how anyone could have worked this out all on their own and he needed to know for sure that it wasn’t some kind of elaborate joke. One that could get him in a great deal of trouble. And one that could easily get whoever had left the message for him killed.
Twenty minutes later he was parked next to the fence that ran along the back of Reykjavík’s domestic airport. He lit a cigarette and waited. If it was some kind of trap they would be watching him so he was going to wait until he was sure there was no one around. He could have easily been followed or they could just be lying in wait for him. Regardless of what the risks were he had to see inside the hut. When his cigarette was finished he lit another and waited some more. It was a process he repeated eleven times before he made his move.
After just under two hours he decided that enough was enough. He had other things to be getting on with and more importantly he had run out of cigarettes. Janko got out of the car and looked around. If anyone was still watching him they were more patient than he was and he was a very patient man. His time spent fighting in the former Yugoslavia had taught him that the ability to outwait your enemy was as valuable as any weapon you might be carrying in your hands. Once he’d decided there was no one anywhere near the abandoned hut he walked over to the door that sat halfway down one of its sides and pulled a set of keys out of his pocket. He selected one of the keys and tried to insert it in the lock. It was far too big for the padlock and wouldn’t fit. Someone had been in his hut and they’d changed the lock on the door too. Chances were they’d also found what was hidden beneath the old floorboards but there was no way he could know for sure without making a real racket. Until he was able to make a return trip with the right tools he would have to assume that they had and change his future plans accordingly. Who could it possibly be and why had they chosen to let him know in such a strange way? Had they intended to murder Óli Þór anyway or was his death just part of the message? Have a good look at this and see what I’ve done. You’re next. Whoever it was certainly seemed to have a point to prove but Janko had offended so many people over the years that the list of potential candidates was virtually endless.
As he got back in his car and started the engine he failed to notice the trailbike nestled in amongst the trees at the base of Öskjuhlíð. As he turned the car around and headed back to his club to get a stiff drink and figure out what to do next the trailbike started its high-pitched engine too. Its rider waited until Janko was almost out of sight before letting the bike roll out from beneath the trees. It accelerated away to catch him up but once it was in sight of the rear of Janko’s car it slowed down so the preoccupied Serb wouldn’t notice he was being followed.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Monday 2nd February
The girl was waving at him and shouting something at the top of her lungs from outside the café on the other side of Austurstræti. He didn’t know how she knew he was a police officer but it was obvious that she did. He took a deep breath and jogged across the street to see what she wanted.
‘Oh, thank you. This crazy girl is trying to steal our tip money.’
Grímur opened the front door and stepped into the café to find a truly chaotic scene unfolding in front of him. A young woman, who did indeed appear to be crazed, was wrestling a large glass tip jar away from a frightened-looking waitress. Or at least she was trying to. The contest looked to be a fairly even one but the waitress seemed to waning in her determination to see off her small but determined assailant. Even from behind he recognised the girl trying to steal the jar. Her name was Svandís Finnbogadóttir and it was not the first time their paths had crossed. Far from it in fact. Svandís managed to free herself and the tip jar from the clutches of the angry waitress and made a break for the door at the rear of the café. The one that opened onto Austurvöllur Square. The waitress gave Grímur a look of abject despair as he ran past her to the back door and launched himself through it after Svandís. When he called out after her she only turned her head slightly but it was enough to distract her from the task at hand. In the split second that it took her to recognise him she tripped over her own feet and instinctively let go of the jar as she braced herself for the fall. She managed to get her hands out in front of her but the jar dropped like a stone and a particularly heavy stone at that. It exploded as it hit the concrete sending a wave of coins across the ground. Hundreds of virtually-worthless silver króna coins spilled in every direction along with a few gold ones.
Passers-by gasped at the noise the jar made as it shattered and one old lady clutched her chest as if she were about to drop dead from the shock of it all. Grímur grabbed Svandís by the arm but he hadn’t bargained on the reaction he would get. Even though she was short and badly undernourished she was wiry and much stronger than she appeared. When she felt his hand on her arm she rolled over and lashed out with her fingernails. Grímur was caught off-guard as he leant down towards her and didn’t even see her hand coming at him. He did however feel the pain as her fingernails dug into the flesh of his cheek. She clawed him as hard as she could and managed to lift a considerable amount of skin as she raked her talons from top to bottom. Grímur recoiled from the pain and put his hand up to his face in a belated attempt to protect himself.
Svandís saw her chance and rolled away from Grímur. He wasn’t about to let her escape though and grabbed her leg with his free hand and pulled her back towards him. She struck out with her other leg and knocked him backwards rather unceremoniously onto his rump. This time she was up and away and as soon as Grímur had regained his footing and a little of his dignity he was off after her. All thoughts he had of taking it easy on her had disappeared in a flash as soon as she’d lashed out at him. He could feel blood dripping from the scratches on his face and a fire burning from within the painful wounds. He caught up to her just as she was about to round the corner onto Pósthússtræti. He wasn’t sure where she thought she was going to lose him in the middle of downtown but she seemed determined to give it a go. He was equally determined that she wouldn’t get as far as the corner so he dove and grabbed at one of her ankles sending her sprawling to the ground once again. His acrobatic manoeuvre drew more gasps from the people assembling in small groups on the footpaths but he didn’t care. He wasn’t about to be attacked in public like that and let her get away with it. As she struggled to get up again he got on top of her with his full weight and pinned her to the ground.
Once that had been achieved he was able to handcuff her and take several badly needed deep breaths. He was too old and far too out of shape for this sort of crap and he knew it. She had come pretty close to getting away from him. One more twist and she would have been gone. Pinned beneath his considerable weight Svandís’s level of protest went from noisy to ear-shattering within a matter of seconds. As soon as she felt the cold handcuffs snap around her wrists she started shrieking as if she were being killed. Grímur ignored her tantrum, loud as it was, hauled her to her feet and then marched her through the crowd of bewildered shoppers back to his car on Hafnarstræti. Her tirade continued the whole way there as well as throughout the short drive back to the police station. Grímur chose to drive around to the side entrance on Snorrabraut rather than to the front door on Hverfisgata and stopped just at the entrance to the car park. His face was stinging like he’d been sliced with a razor and his ears were ringing from the relentless mix of senseless chatter, hollow threats and expletives a sailor would have been proud of coming from the back seat. He didn’t need any of this in his life and had already made the decision to cut his losses and set her loose. He applied the handbrake and left the engine running as he got out of the car into the freshening breeze that was coming up Snorrabraut from the bay. In the background Esja was covered in a fresh coat of shiny white snow.
