The Darkness Knows
- Автор: Indridason Arnaldur
- Серия: Detective Konrad #1
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Harvill Secker/Penguin Random House UK
- ISBN: 978-1-78730-232-7
- Переводчик: Victoria Cribb
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Darkness Knows». Краткое содержание книги:
The case: impossible to solve. Until now.
A frozen body is discovered in the icy depths of Langjökull glacier, apparently that of a businessman who disappeared thirty years before. At the time, an extensive search and police investigation yielded no results-one of the missing man’s business associates was briefly held in custody, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him.
Now the associate is arrested again and Konrád, the retired policeman who originally investigated the disappearance, is called back to reopen the case that has weighed on his mind for decades.
When a woman approaches him with new information that she obtained from her deceased brother, progress can finally be made in solving this long-cold case.
All afternoon he had been pondering what Jóhanna had said about a woman with a biblical name who had once rung up to speak to Bernhard. She had been convinced that Bernhard was having an affair with the woman.
As Konrád entered the foyer, the meeting for parents was just beginning. Chairs had been lined up in front of a small stage where a man in a jacket, presumably the head teacher, was fiddling with a microphone, tapping it, checking it was switched on, then tapping it again. The parents were chatting among themselves. By far, the majority of them were women.
Konrád headed down one of the corridors that led off the foyer in every direction. The old school building had been extended more than once, and long corridors connected it to the new wings. Doors were open into classrooms where the pupils’ work was displayed on the walls. The drawings revealed a wide divergence in talents. Húgó had shown some artistic promise as a boy and had once tried, without much success, to teach his father to draw. The only remotely decent pictures Konrád had been able to produce were of cars. Erna had kept all his efforts.
The walls of the corridors in the old building were lined with framed class photos going right back to the founding of the school. A photo had been taken of every form in its final year and there were so many of them that they had to be displayed in two or even three rows. Like a journey through time they showed the changing fashions and haircuts, from the short back and sides, through the Beatles moptop, to the modern lack of any defining trend. Some of the older photos showed teenage girls with beehive hair, their faces plastered in thick foundation.
It took Konrád a while to work out what order they were in, but once he had he made his way slowly but surely towards Bernhard’s leaving year. Although there had been four forms in that year, which made it harder, he was able to pick out Bernhard in one of the photos. It was black and white, and had obviously been taken in one of the classrooms. The pupils were smiling at the photographer, perhaps mindful that the moment would be preserved for posterity, for as long as the school lasted, and that they would be able to revisit their youth in these corridors whenever they felt the urge.
Bernhard had changed little in the intervening years. His tall, lanky figure could be seen in the back row towards the centre. His shoulder-length hair was parted in the middle, he wore a stripy jumper, and he was smiling along with the other kids at some remark the photographer had made to put them at ease.
According to Jóhanna, her ex-husband had gone to a class reunion where he had met all these people again, many years later, when the morning of their life was over, to be replaced by the daily grind.
As Konrád stood alone in the corridor, studying the class photo, his phone started ringing. It was Marta.
‘I haven’t heard from you for days,’ she said. ‘What have you been up to?’
‘Not much,’ Konrád said. ‘You?’
‘Same story here. I can’t stop thinking about those car keys.’
‘Car keys?’
‘The ones to Sigurvin’s jeep. I keep wondering why he didn’t have them on him. I reckon there can only be one explanation, assuming they didn’t fall out of his pocket.’
‘Which is?’
‘Sigurvin’s killer was intending to move his jeep. To drive it up to the glacier, presumably.’
‘Yes, sounds plausible.’
‘Isn’t that the only possible explanation?’ Marta asked.
‘The killer probably intended to make it look as if Sigurvin had driven himself to Langjökull and died of exposure. Of course, he wasn’t dressed for a glacier trip but maybe they thought that didn’t matter.’
‘At any rate, there’s something unfinished about the whole business,’ Marta said. ‘About how he was disposed of — his jeep in one place, his body in another. As you said yourself when they found him, it’s like a half-finished job.’
‘It’s possible the weather put a spanner in the works,’ Konrád said. ‘There was a severe storm on the glacier for several days following Sigurvin’s disappearance. Perhaps they had to abandon their plan before they could complete it.’
Konrád stared at the class photo. Another face suddenly caught his eye, the pretty face of a girl sitting on the floor in the front row; the only one who wasn’t smiling, but gazing solemnly at the camera instead. He couldn’t be entirely sure but the resemblance was striking enough for his heart to miss a beat.
Marta was saying something on the phone but he didn’t hear her. He was thinking back to what Jóhanna had said about the woman who had once rung Bernhard, pretending she wanted to buy a part for her car. The woman with the biblical name that Jóhanna couldn’t remember through her alcoholic haze. The woman she was convinced had been having an affair with her husband.
‘... like a half-finished job?’ he heard Marta’s voice repeating in his ear. ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’
Konrád didn’t take his eyes off the picture.
‘Yes,’ he said distractedly, ‘unfinished, sordid and ugly.’
51
Unable to wait until the following morning, Konrád drove straight back up to Efra-Breidholt to see Jóhanna and try to confirm his suspicions before deciding what to do next. He’d said a curt goodbye to Marta and hurried out of the school. Although the main rush hour had passed and the traffic was lighter, he was so impatient that he dodged his way between the other cars and once even jumped a red light.
As he drove, he reviewed all he knew about the Sigurvin case, followed by all the things he didn’t know, despite the long years of investigating and working and thinking and interviewing and meeting people from all levels of society who had links to Hjaltalín and the missing man. The discovery of the body in the ice had certainly thrown up new information that narrowed the search, but Konrád thought that, ironically, if it hadn’t been for Villi, the witness he had never even met, he wouldn’t have found the leads he was following now.
His mind went back and forth over all the different pieces of the puzzle, thinking about Bernhard and the Scouts and Sigurvin and the girl in the class photo, about search and rescue teams, and the secret stash of money in Sigurvin’s kitchen. About the rundown scrapyard and Bernhard’s failed marriage. Hjaltalín’s peculiar obstinacy. And the business Sigurvin had got mixed up in that had led to his death. What could it have been, and how come it had ended in tragedy?
From there, his thoughts led him to reflect on the impact the case had had on his own life, shaping him perhaps more than he had realised or was willing to acknowledge. He thought about the effect the failed investigation had had on him as a police officer, about the reason why he had been sent on unpaid leave back in the day. It had been one of the few times he had completely lost it.
He shook his head, cursing, and blasted his horn at the car in front of him, which was taking forever to get going again now that the lights had turned green. He had always regretted what happened. His colleague Ríkhardur had asked if he’d lost his mind. To be fair, he probably had. He had gone out to his jeep in the yard behind the police station, grabbed a tyre iron and stormed back inside, bursting into the corridor to the cells with the intention of beating the living daylights out of the prisoner. Instead, he had been seized, thrown to the floor and held down by his colleagues until he had recovered his senses, after which he had been sent home.
Konrád hadn’t been able to claim extenuating circumstances, even though the prisoner he was intending to beat with the tyre iron had attacked him first by headbutting him in the face and breaking his nose, causing a fountain of blood and excruciating pain. Even though the prisoner had insulted him and threatened his family. Even though he had mocked him and jeered at him over his investigation into Sigurvin’s disappearance, and called him the most pathetic piece of shit in the whole fucking police force.