Dark as Night, page 3
Darling. Just to let you know I’ve moved out. I’ve had to go abroad unexpectedly, a family matter, and I won’t be back anytime soon. Forgive the short notice. I’ve paid three months’ rent into your account. Love u. Miss u. Bye.
P.S. You can throw out all the junk in the garage, I’ve taken everything I want to keep.
Daníel was more or less accustomed to being gobsmacked at his eccentric neighbour and tenant, but this took the biscuit. He reread the message several times but could make neither head nor tail of it. It was stranger than any physics equation. He went into the living room and opened the French windows. The garage lights were out, but Daníel crossed the lawn anyway, and as he approached he glimpsed the key in the latch. Opening the door, he fumbled for the switch and was even more astonished when the light came on. Nothing in Lady Gúgúlú’s converted garage apartment had changed. Everything was as usual – messy and complicated. The bed at the far end was unmade, two crumpled beer cans stood on the bedside table, and there was an iPad on top of the duvet. Draped next to the sewing machine was what looked like a finished costume adorned with brightly coloured butterflies, each of them hand-stitched. The hours of work that must have gone into making that dress. Daníel vaguely recalled something about a magnificent butterfly drag show, but truth be told he didn’t always pay full attention to Lady’s detailed descriptions of her performances and outfits. Opening the fridge he discovered food and an unopened six pack; there was rubbish in the rubbish bin and in the tiny bathroom a mug containing Lady’s toothbrush and toothpaste, as well as what appeared to be most of her toiletries on the shelf. Wasn’t it strange to travel abroad without at least taking your toothbrush and razor?
He went back into the main room and glanced about. This was altogether more than a little strange. And strangest of all was that her mobile phone in its pink glitter case lay on the table. Who went abroad without taking their phone? Daníel felt a wave of unease go through him. It wasn’t the dread of death he often experienced when he entered a space where someone had passed. Not exactly. This was more like a mixture of shock and sadness. Lady Gúgúlú, or Haraldur, as she was officially named, was the closest thing Daníel had to a friend outside work. As unalike as they were, somehow, by accident, they had become each other’s support network. Daníel had resolved various issues for Haraldur, and Haraldur, it turned out, was brilliant with Daníel’s kids, who regarded him as their weird and wonderful auntie who lived in the garage.
Daníel locked the door behind him and started back across the lawn, but then came to an abrupt halt and stood open-mouthed in the middle of the garden. At the centre of the wild patch next to the rocks stood a tree. Roughly as tall as a man, still without leaves in the early spring and, judging from the mounds of soil around it, recently planted. Evidently the lady in the garage had received some kind of dispensation from the elves to mess with their enchanted patch. Daníel himself had never managed to cut the grass there, because, curiously enough, the lawnmower always broke down or the shears fell apart. Clearly Lady had taken the trouble to do a spot of gardening before she left, but not to say goodbye to him.
10
Róbert hadn’t planned to break his journey because he wasn’t confident he’d be able to remount, still less that the wretched horse would get going again if given a few minutes’ rest. But after they’d come down off Þrengslin moor south of Reykjavík and were heading along Hlíðarendarvegur, the zip on his parka broke and it was too gusty to have it flapping about him like that. He steered the horse into a small hollow at the side of the road, halted and dismounted. His whole body was groaning and the horse looked like it felt the same way. The animal spluttered and champed at the bit, shifting on its feet, then stood with its head drooping despondently, like a condemned man.
‘We have a way to go yet,’ he told the horse. ‘But the ground will be softer.’ The horse didn’t look up, apparently unconvinced by his reassurances. Maybe it realised that, as of today, life would never be the same. It would never go back home to its stable, because somewhere south of Selfoss a different life awaited. And it was gradually dawning on Róbert that his own life there would be a lot more monotonous and lonely than it had been these past four years. In fact he’d been incredibly lucky that they hadn’t caught up with him sooner. The drag shows had probably been a mistake. Although it wasn’t allowed, the audience took photos and videos, and posted them online. Clearly wigs and thick make-up didn’t fool the face-recognition software they used. Or maybe it was pure coincidence. Maybe someone had simply recognised him.
The zip on his parka had softened and felt like putty between his fingers. The teeth wouldn’t close. He opened his rucksack and pulled out the remedy of all remedies: duct tape. He bit into it, tore off a few strips and taped the flaps of his parka together. He thought he heard the horse groan when he remounted. He’d stiffened up himself during their brief halt, so he assumed the animal had too. All the more reason not to linger but continue their journey. Keep his eyes and ears open, veer off the road if he heard a car coming, but otherwise allow the horse to walk at a leisurely pace until they reached the mouth of the river Ölfusá. Then he had to watch and wait until he was sure no car was near and gallop across the bridge as fast as the horse would take him. From there it was only a short trek across heathland to the bridleway that would lead them all the way home.
Home. What a fluid concept that was. In the same way his own character was fluid. Now he was saying farewell to Lady Gúgúlú and everything associated with her. That chapter in his life was over. Prior to that he’d said farewell to his life as Róbert Þór Gíslason, maybe without knowing what he was getting himself into when he’d asked people to call him the anglicised Thor Gislason. He had subsequently cast off that name for another, which he’d then dropped before assuming yet another. He’d gone by various names since his troubles began. And now he was moving into a new phase. With any luck it would be the last, because he’d run out of back-up plans. He had neither the money nor the energy for another emergency escape.
From now on he’d be plain Robbi. Back to the beginning. To when he was a nonentity. When people called him Robbi.
‘If you want to change your persona or your self-image, now’s the time to do it,’ he said to the horse, and as if by magic the animal slipped into the ambling tölt gait unique to the Icelandic breed, and Robbi felt himself glide across the sands. Perhaps the horse was simply celebrating being on soft ground. The accursed rocky terrain had taken its toll on them both. Robbi had bought the horse relatively cheaply on the understanding that it had a fine tölt but had never got the hang of the flying pace or ‘fifth gear’ that, apparently, both of its progenitors had mastered. But Robbi couldn’t have cared less. The horse had gone a long way towards fulfilling its obligation. To carry him safely from one place to the next.
11
Áróra wrapped her hair in a towel and slipped into Daníel’s bathrobe, which he kept on a hook on the back of the bathroom door but never used. She had wept in the shower, the hot water washing away her tears as they flowed, and her heart now felt lighter. Meanwhile, out in the kitchen, Daníel seemed heavy-hearted. He sat hunched over the table with a magnifying glass, examining some bits of papers. When he glanced up, his face had a worried look.
‘My tenant has vanished,’ he said.
‘Lady Gúgúlú?’ Áróra knew Lady well. She’d been a fixture at Daníel’s place since they first met. A kind of honorary member of the family, who nevertheless did her own thing and didn’t always follow convention.
‘Yes, Haraldur,’ said Daníel, returning to the papers. Then he sighed and set aside the magnifying glass. ‘This note is all he left, but I can hardly believe he went without saying goodbye to me. Just to leave a note is so…’ He paused. ‘Hurtful.’
Áróra could see from Daníel’s eyes that he was wounded. She knew him well enough by now to be able to read his feelings. Although he usually had a calm exterior his eyes always betrayed his emotions.
‘Did you try calling him?’
‘That’s what’s bothering me,’ said Daníel. ‘There’s no point, because he left his phone behind. And his iPad and his TV, and a whole lot of other valuables, which he says in this note to throw away. He doesn’t seem to have taken his toiletries or other personal things either. He’s left a new costume he was finishing for his next drag show. A magnificent dress it must have taken him hours to make. I just don’t get it.’
Áróra sat down next to Daníel, stroked his back and read the note. The message was brief, although it did contain those terms of endearment Lady sprinkled about her as if she were sowing seeds, and which always seemed to issue from her lips in English: Love u. Miss u.
‘What’s with the magnifying glass?’ Áróra asked, adding in a playful voice: ‘I wasn’t aware detectives still employed Sherlock’s methods.’
Daníel gave a faint smile at her attempt to be funny. ‘I’ve been comparing this note to some of the other notes he’s left, and it’s definitely his handwriting. But something doesn’t add up.’
Áróra nodded. A lot of things that day didn’t add up. ‘It’s been a strange day,’ she said, and Daníel placed his arms about her and drew her close.
‘I forgot I was going to cook for us,’ he said. ‘Why don’t we order pizza and open a bottle of wine, snuggle up on the sofa and console each other?’ Áróra nodded, and Daníel let go of her and rose from his chair. ‘Can you order a pizza while I call Helena at the station to ask her to put out an appeal on Gúgúlú?’ Áróra stared at him in surprise. He seemed to catch her expression: ‘When people disappear without taking essential items with them,’ he explained, ‘it suggests they’re thinking of killing themselves.’
The thought hadn’t crossed her mind. And now she realised it wasn’t exactly hurt she’d see on Daníel’s face. His eyes were clouded with fear. She stood up and went to fetch her phone from the bathroom. Now they really could do with pizza and a bottle of wine.
12
Here it was. His back-up plan. His fallback position. In his head, Róbert had called his next step plan B, but he’d moved so far down the alphabet now, this was more like a plan L or M. Still, he had learned from his experiences over what was now almost a decade. Learned and understood from each of his failures that it wasn’t enough to change countries and keep a low profile. Or to change his name and sail under a false flag. He needed to renounce his ties with the world altogether. And the time to do so had come.
The solitary house stood to the far southwest of Tjarnarbyggð, and Róbert had bought the plots on either side so he wouldn’t have neighbours. All around was an endless plain over which the sky had seemingly capsized like a vast, translucent white dome. The lowland stretched south as far as the eye could see down to the sea at Eyrarbakki, where, on a clear day, you could make out the tower of Litla-Hraun prison. To the north, in the distance, a chain of blue-white mountains rose, spreading as far east as the Eyjafjallajökull glacier. This clear view, extending for several kilometres in all directions, made it impossible for anyone to approach without being seen.
The only route to the house was via a complicated series of roundabouts and turnings, and beside the last roundabout, leading to the turn-off to his house and the two vacant plots, stood a post box. Not that there would be any post, except possibly junk mail, because no one officially lived at the address. It was registered as a summer house in the name of an acquaintance of Róbert’s. An acquaintance who couldn’t be traced back to him. An acquaintance who himself was only vaguely aware he possessed the property, and who in his alcohol haze had most likely forgotten he once signed a document to the effect that he was the legal owner of a summer house and that Róbert’s mother was his sole heir. A convenient arrangement that benefited both parties, since Róbert had arranged for regular payments to be made to the owner of the summer house. Hiding from the world was hard work.
And Róbert’s back-up plan had been nothing if not hard work. In fact for years it had been a kind of hobby. He had drawn all the plans himself, designing the house from the ground up, and once the footings were laid and the windows and outside insulation installed, he had done more or less everything else himself.
He felt a release of tension as the horse lumbered into the final stretch, and pitied the poor creature when he had to force it back onto hummocky ground to take a detour to avoid being seen by a car before joining the road again. He brought the horse to a halt and dismounted about a hundred metres inside the gate that was clearly marked: Private Road – No Access. He was stiff all over and had pins and needles in his feet, so he leaned against the horse until he felt the blood begin to circulate in his legs again. The hole was where he’d left it, likewise the gravel he’d placed at the bottom to prevent frost heave. He took off his rucksack and extracted the box, held it out before him for an instant and closed his eyes. How curious it felt to be holding this little box containing the curse. For years he had kept it so close, yet hidden it from sight. He had considered hiring a digger to bury it somewhere so damned deep its power would be vanishingly small, but that wouldn’t lift the curse. It might turn out that he could regard the curse as a blessing. His life insurance at the eleventh hour. In the worst-case scenario there was a chance they would be happy to take the box and let him go. Unlikely, but it gave him a glimmer of hope.
He placed the box inside the hole and used his hands to cover it with soil. He sensed the horse gazing at him with curiosity and maybe even a touch of disdain, which was hardly surprising. How could the animal possibly comprehend what the man who’d dragged it on this arduous journey was doing, kneeling by the roadside, grubbing around in the dirt? He clambered to his feet then stooped once more to smooth over the traces of fresh soil so they’d disappear more quickly. When he’d finished, he felt a sudden urge to do a little Gúgúlú number. He blessed it by crossing himself. ‘Rest in peace, darling,’ he pronounced over the tiny grave then winked at the horse. It gave a tired snort.
13
He had purposefully refrained from burying the box as deep as he had in the garden at home in Hafnarfjörður. Home, he thought and shook his head. Home was no longer there. From now on he lived here. Home was here. He felt a pang in his heart when he thought of Daníel, and could only pray he didn’t come looking for him. Perhaps that was the one loose thread he ought to have tied up better. Maybe he’d been in some kind of denial. Refusing to face the fact that the day might arrive when Daníel would no longer be in his life. Or his crazy kids. Róbert swallowed hard. He was better off not thinking about the kids right now. Not when he was so exhausted and scared. It was just too much. He couldn’t permit himself to break down until later.
It was good to have the box closer to the surface here, because its sphere of influence covered a longish section of road and served as an extra security barrier. Anyone attempting to ram the gate or drive straight through it would find their engine stall when they came near the box. So no vehicle could get right up to the house.
Róbert tugged gently on the reins to urge the horse on. But the bay seemed suddenly rooted to the spot, as if it was in two minds about moving into the outhouse.
‘Easy, easy,’ Róbert said to the horse. ‘Come on. I’ve made a nice stall for you. And there’s food and water waiting. Giddy-up.’ The animal reluctantly obeyed Róbert’s command, and he led it through the outhouse doors and into the stall. The animal clearly felt the same as he did after the journey. Stiff and sore all over. He removed the saddle and bridle, and the horse seemed relieved to be rid of the rough bone in its mouth. Róbert grabbed a cloth that hung on a hook and gave the animal’s back and haunches a brisk rub down.
The outhouse was stocked with everything he needed to keep a horse for a fairly long time. He didn’t know much about horses, so back when he was installing the stable he’d searched online for information from the Agricultural College as well as a few experienced horse breeders. He was relieved now that he’d done his homework. He had the whole plan worked out – knew exactly in what order to do things. He cut open one of the bales, grabbed a few handfuls of hay and also gave the horse a generous scoop of pellets. Then he filled the water trough and set the timer on the light switch.
‘Bed at ten, old boy,’ he told the horse as he left. ‘But you can watch me through the porthole if you want.’ He indicated the window he’d placed directly opposite the stall, pointing towards the main house. He had no idea whether horses suffered from boredom, but it had occurred to him at some point that the window would at least be a sort of eye onto the world. Like TV for horses.
He closed the outhouse door and walked over to the main house. The lights came on automatically, although there was no real need for them, now that spring was here and the days were lengthening. But it was good to know that at least one of the electrical circuits he’d installed worked properly. He glanced back at the outhouse and saw the horse clearly through the lighted window. It had its head in the manger, and Róbert felt a warm sensation course through him. Maybe he and the horse had formed a bond of some sort during these past few arduous hours. Maybe he should christen the horse. Choose a name that suited its character. Then again, it was probably foolish. Better he didn’t. Safer not to develop any emotional ties to the horse. It would only make it harder for him to kill the animal if the need arose.
MONDAY
14
Daníel had woken before six with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. He’d made himself a coffee and sat down to go over the case file on Ísafold’s disappearance yet again, only this time in light of what this woman Elísabet had told them the previous day.
