The Darkness Knows

24

Olga was irritable and inclined to be snappish when Konrád dropped in to see her the following day. Nothing had changed. She had worked for the police archives for many years, was nearing retirement and had always been extremely prickly. As she stood at her desk, she reminded Konrád inescapably of one of her filing cabinets, with her short, dumpy figure, extremely broad in the beam, supported on sturdy legs. She had always been an eccentric character, possessed of the kind of temperament that made people go out of their way to avoid her. But, over the years, Konrád had managed to penetrate her protective shell, and towards the end of his time in the police they had developed quite a good working relationship. That didn’t prevent her from being abrasive, though, and putting up obstacles when he asked her to help him look up the traffic accident in which Herdís’s brother, Villi, had died.

‘I thought you’d retired,’ she huffed. ‘So why do you want to know about it? What’s it got to do with you?’

‘His sister asked me to look into it.’

‘Is she some girl you’re messing around with?’

‘No, she’s a woman who came to me for help.’

Konrád knew there was a reason why she had immediately assumed he must be involved with a girl. According to Marta, Olga was worse than ever these days because her husband had finally reached the end of his tether and walked out on her. They’d been married for thirty years when, out of the blue, he’d announced to her and their two daughters that he’d had enough and was leaving. He didn’t give any explanation but Olga had quickly found out that he’d moved in with another woman — ‘some skinny little cow,’ as she put it — and was behaving as if he had never known his ex-wife. Konrád searched around for some way of expressing solidarity with her plight.

‘How are you?’ he asked cautiously.

‘Oh, don’t pretend you haven’t heard,’ she snapped.

‘I’m not, I...’ Konrád had been about to offer her his condolences, but stopped himself because no one had died and he didn’t know any appropriate greeting for the newly divorced.

‘He was always a stupid sod,’ Olga said, which Konrád assumed was a reference to her ex-husband.

He had met the man occasionally at work socials, where they’d chatted a bit, and although he didn’t really know him, he’d felt sorry for him having to live with such a gorgon. Now it was Olga he pitied, though he couldn’t help wondering if her husband’s departure wasn’t partly her fault. Not that he would ever dare express such a thought.

‘Are tongues wagging upstairs?’ she asked.

‘No, not at all,’ Konrád assured her. ‘But then I’m hardly ever there. I’m glad to have left, to be honest.’

‘Those German tourists succeeded where you failed,’ Olga said, with ill-concealed glee. ‘Bet that pisses you off, doesn’t it? Frankly, I always thought you lot were bloody useless not to be able to find the man. But, of course, you know that. I’ve given you enough grief about it in the past.’

‘Yes, right,’ Konrád said, careful not to rise to this.

‘I can’t let you have any files, Konrád,’ Olga added, and he realised, with a sinking heart, that she was in her most obstructive mood. ‘You know that. You’re not in the force any more and we can’t go opening up the archives to any Tom, Dick or Harry who wanders in off the street.’

‘I know that,’ Konrád said. ‘Actually, what I wanted was to ask whether you remembered the hit-and-run. It’s so rare for drivers to flee the scene like that and even rarer for them never to be traced or to come forward of their own accord.’

He had gone online and scrolled through the old newspapers that had covered the accident, finding press photos of the scene, showing a knot of people standing around the ambulance and police cars in the blizzard.