The Darkness Knows

The evening his father died, Konrád was out on the town with his mates. By then he had dropped out of school, started drinking hard and become involved in petty crime. He had done a few jobs for his father, like selling stolen goods and distributing contraband — both from the American base at Keflavík and from the cargo ships — and on one occasion he had broken into a shop selling watches with a mate but ended up fleeing the scene without bringing away any loot. He was on the fast track to ruin, mixing with the wrong company, and deep down he’d known it.

‘You must have been shocked,’ Hjaltalín had said to him in that prison cell, but that was an understatement. It had been like a punch in the guts when the police broke the news and manner of his father’s death to him. Konrád felt as if the shock waves from that evening had been reverberating inside him ever since.

Eygló had been reluctant to meet Konrád when he rang this time but, after repeated requests on his part, she had finally agreed to have lunch with him at a restaurant in the city centre. She turned up punctually, dressed in black as she had been at their first meeting; petite, only a little younger than Konrád but looking good for her age. Her face was as smooth as if she’d never known a day’s worry in her life. They shook hands, two strangers linked by a pair of old conmen.

‘Do you really think you can dig up anything new on your father after all these years?’ Eygló asked, having chosen the plaice from the menu. Konrád ordered the same, remembering how quick she was to get to the point — no beating about the bush.

‘A while ago someone asked if I’d forgotten him,’ Konrád said. ‘Asked if I felt he wasn’t worth wasting my energy on. I have to say, I was a bit taken aback. But I have less to do these days and maybe it’s taken me all these years to get to the point where I want to know more about my father.’

‘He was a deeply unpleasant man,’ Eygló said, ‘according to Engilbert, my dad. But then you can’t have failed to be aware of that. Men like your father make enemies.’

‘I believe the police talked to everyone who knew him, as well as a whole load of people who didn’t, but nothing doing. I don’t really know where to begin looking into his death, so it occurred to me to start with you. Last time we talked you said you reckoned my dad had something on Engilbert.’

‘Yes. I also told you that I didn’t know what it was.’

‘Do you think they’d started working together again?’

‘I can’t believe that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because Dad loathed your father. He thought he was an absolute shit and didn’t want anything more to do with him.’

‘Is that what he told you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So how come he was talking to you about my father?’

‘He never used to, but one time he and my mother had a fight and your father’s name came up — and my mother started ranting about what a bastard he was. Afterwards, I asked Dad who she’d been talking about, and he told me he’d got into bad company when he was younger and had let himself be talked into doing things that he deeply regretted later.’

‘Did he tell you what those things were?’

‘No. What makes you think they’d started working together again? What evidence do you have for that?’

‘Just some stuff I found among my father’s papers after he died,’ Konrád said.

‘What stuff?’

‘Some articles about notorious fake mediums and how they’d been exposed. Stories about fraud. Accounts of the Ether World.’

‘The Ether World?’

‘Yes.’

Eygló gave Konrád an appraising glance. He had noticed before how wary and suspicious she was by nature.

‘Was his interest in the Ether World out of character?’ she asked at last. ‘Was it a side of him you hadn’t seen before?’

‘Yes, totally. The articles and stories were recent — from a couple of years before his death — and it occurred to me that he might have started messing around with spiritualism again. But I never found any confirmation of that.’