The Darkness(14)

‘I’ve had quite a day,’ she said, before stepping into the kitchen to fetch the coffee she’d made in advance.

When she came back into the cramped sitting room and handed Pétur a cup, he smiled his thanks and waited for her to continue with what she had been saying, radiating patience and sympathy. He’d been a surgeon, but she thought he’d have made an excellent psychiatrist: he was a man who knew how to listen.

‘I’m stopping work,’ she said, when the silence grew uncomfortable.

‘That was on the cards, wasn’t it?’ he said. ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds, you know. You’ll have more time for your hobbies, more time to enjoy life.’

He certainly knew how to do that, she reflected, allowing a moment of envy to sour her thoughts. As a doctor with a successful career behind him, he didn’t have to face any financial worries in his old age.

‘Yes, it was on the cards,’ she agreed in a low voice, ‘but not quite yet.’ Best to be honest with him, not try to embellish the facts. ‘To tell the truth, I’ve been given my marching orders. I’ve only got two weeks left. They’ve hired some boy in my place.’

‘Bloody hell. And you took that lying down? It doesn’t sound like you.’

‘Well,’ she said, mentally cursing herself for not having put up more of a fight when Magnús broke the news, ‘at least I managed to wangle one final case out of my boss, to finish on.’

‘Now you’re talking. Anything interesting?’

‘A murder … I think.’

‘Are you serious? Two weeks to solve a murder? You’re not worried you won’t succeed and that it’ll prey on your mind after you retire?’

She hadn’t thought of that, but Pétur had a point.

‘Too late to back out now,’ she said, without much conviction. ‘Anyway, it’s not a hundred per cent certain that it was murder.’

‘What’s the case about?’ he asked, managing to sound genuinely interested.

‘A young woman found dead in a cove on Vatnsleysustr?nd.’

‘Recently?’

‘More than a year ago.’

Pétur frowned. ‘I don’t remember that.’

‘It didn’t attract much media coverage at the time. She was an asylum-seeker.’

‘An asylum-seeker … No, I definitely didn’t hear about that.’

Not many people did, Hulda thought.

‘How did she die?’ he asked.

‘She drowned, but there were injuries on her body. The detective who handled the case – not one of our best men, I might add – dismissed it as suicide. I’m not so sure.’

Feeling pleased with the progress she’d made that day, she gave him a brief account of her discoveries but, to her disappointment, Pétur looked sceptical.

‘Are you sure,’ he asked hesitantly, ‘are you sure you’re not building this up to be bigger than it really is?’

Hulda was a little taken aback by his frankness, but another part of her appreciated it.

‘No, I’m not at all sure,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m determined to follow it up.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said.

It was getting late. They had swapped their coffee for red wine a couple of hours ago. Pétur had stayed longer than anticipated but, far from complaining, Hulda welcomed the company. The rain clouds had finally departed, making way for the sun, and the sky was deceptively light outside, belying the lateness of the hour.

The wine hadn’t been Hulda’s idea. After finishing his coffee, Pétur had asked if she happened to have a drop of brandy, and she apologized but said she did have a couple of bottles of wine knocking about somewhere.

‘I like the sound of that. Good for the old ticker,’ he’d said, and who was she to question the word of a medical man?

‘It strikes me as a bit unusual,’ Pétur remarked warily, feeling his way, ‘that you don’t have any family photos on display.’

The observation took Hulda by surprise, but she tried to sound casual: ‘I’ve never been one for that kind of thing. I don’t know why.’

‘I suppose I understand. I probably have too many photos of my wife around the place. Maybe that’s why it’s taken me so long to get over her. I’m stuck in the past, quite literally.’ He heaved a sigh. They were on to their second bottle now. ‘What about your parents? Your brothers and sisters? No pictures of them either?’

‘I don’t have any brothers or sisters,’ Hulda said. She didn’t immediately go on, but Pétur waited patiently, sipping his wine. ‘My mother and I were never particularly close,’ she said eventually, as if justifying the absence of photographs, though there was no reason why she should have to make excuses.

‘How long ago did she die?’

‘Fifteen years ago. She wasn’t that old, only seventy,’ Hulda said, conscious of how scarily soon she would be that age herself: in just over five years. And the last five years had gone by in a flash.

‘She can’t have been very old when she had you,’ Pétur remarked, after doing some quick mental arithmetic.

‘Twenty … though I don’t think that would have counted as particularly young in those days.’