“Right.”
“Grimur put up your notice before he left.”
“Good.”
“And the telephone exchange will open at ten so you can ring your boss, the district magistrate.”
She turned to the girl. “Thanks for your help, Rosa darling. Run along and play now.”
The girl put the can down and skipped away.
Ingibjorg disappeared into the house with the empty washing basket in her hands.
Kjartan sat on an old whale bone that lay by the gable of the house and sipped on his coffee. Visibility was good in the clear weather, and he felt he could see a white painted house on the mainland to the north, although it could also have been the remains of some snow.
The screeching of cliff birds reached him from Hafnarey and fused with the surrounding bleating of sheep. The salted scent of the sea lingered in the breeze.
Ingibjorg came out again and had removed her apron now, put on a tasseled cap, and draped a knitted shawl over her shoulders.
“I’ll walk you down to the telephone exchange now,” she said cheerfully.
They followed the path to the road and headed down toward the village. Ingibjorg walked a lot slower than what he was used to and occasionally halted completely to look at something or chat with the people they bumped into. He waited patiently and responded to the greetings of the people Ingibjorg introduced him to. But he was slightly unnerved by the way people brazenly stared at him as soon as they started nattering with the district officer’s wife.
Finally they reached the co-operative building. There was a space on one of the store’s doors that was obviously regularly used as a notice board. Some rusty old drawing pins were stuck to it, and a notice advertising the Whitsunday mass next week had recently been put up. Beside it was the notice that Kjartan had typed and stuck up with four new drawing pins. Ingibjorg paused to read it and nodded with a smile, as if to confirm it was all in good order.
The telephone exchange was in a one-story building above a stone basement, directly opposite the co- op.
White letters on a blue sign over the door read Post amp; Telegraph Office, and inside there was a small hall, with coat hangers and a small bench, that led into a small reception room. A few gray radio receivers hung on one wall, while on the other there was a cabinet full of compartments for the sorting of mail. A bulky safe stood on a plinth in one corner.
A small, delicate woman welcomed them with a smile. She was wearing trousers and a sweater, with long hair woven into a thick braid.
“This is Stina; she’s the head of the telephone exchange and the post office,” Ingibjorg said to Kjartan. Then she explained the reason for their visit: “The assistant magistrate needs to phone his superiors. Are you open yet, Stina?”
Ingibjorg sat in front of the desk and signaled Kjartan to join her.
“I’m just opening now. I just have to turn on the generator and switch on the exchange,” Stina answered, slipping on some old work gloves and disappearing behind the door.
“That’s the only electricity we have here,” Ingibjorg explained a bit further, “the energy this generator produces. There’s actually another generator in the fish factory for the fish processing, but it’s rarely used.”
Within a few moments they heard the muffled murmur of an engine and the smiling lady reappeared. She slipped on a bulky set of black headphones with an attached microphone and turned on the contraption by flicking a few switches. She waited a moment for the lamps to warm up and then said loudly and clearly: “Stykkisholmur, Stykkisholmur, Flatey radio calling.” She repeated this several times.
She then put down the headphones and said, “Stykkisholmur will answer in a moment. He sometimes likes to keep you waiting, just to give people the impression that he’s really busy.”
She turned out to be right. A blast of static soon erupted, and a male voice answered through the speaker on the wall: “Flatey radio, Stykkisholmur answering.”
“Good morning, Stykkisholmur. We have a call for the district magistrate in Patreksfjordur.”
“One moment,” the voice answered, followed by a silence. Stina and Ingibjorg solemnly waited without saying a word.
Kjartan looked out the window facing the village and saw two men standing by the notice in the co-op store. They seemed to be reading it with great interest and then stuck their heads together and looked in the direction of the telephone exchange.
“Flatey radio, Stykkisholmur. We have the district magistrate of Patreksfjordur on the line.”
“Go ahead,” Stina said, pointing at a black receiver on the desk in front of Kjartan.
He picked up the phone. “Hello, hello. Kjartan in Flatey here.”
The voice at the other end of the line was faint. “Yes, hello, how’s the investigation going?”
“We’ve recovered the body,” Kjartan answered, “but we still haven’t identified it yet. It seems likely that he was alive when he reached the island but then died of fatigue. He seems to have been lying there for several months after he died.”
There was a brief silence, after which the magistrate said, “That’s odd. Doesn’t anyone know who he is?”
“No. The body is unrecognizable.”
There was another brief silence while the magistrate evaluated the situation.
“Right then, so you’ll have to send the body to Reykjavik,” he then said.
“Yes. The casket will be traveling on the mail boat tomorrow.”
“Good.”
“Should I come home today?”
“Today? No, hang on there for a bit and talk to some of the islanders. There must be some way of finding out who took that man to the island.”
Kjartan wasn’t happy. “I’m not used to this kind of investigative work,” he said.
“No, but you’ll have to do for now. I’m not going to call in the police from Reykjavik if we can solve this in the district ourselves. District Officer Grimur will help you with your inquiries.”
“Right then, but what about the notarizations I was supposed to work on?”
“They can wait another two or three days. Don’t you worry about them; just concentrate on this. Be in touch tomorrow. Good-bye and best of luck.”
The phone call ended, and Stina let Stykkisholmur know that was enough for now.
Kjartan handed her a copy of the notice and asked her to read it out over the radio to the other islands.
“Skaleyjar, Svefneyjar, Latur,” she called into the mouthpiece. “Flatey radio calling.”
She repeated this three times until the islands answered, each in turn. She had started to read out the notice as they were walking outside.
“Grimur will be back at lunchtime and you can talk to him about how to proceed,” Ingibjorg said when they were standing outside the telephone exchange. Then she added: “Maybe you should take a walk while you’re waiting for Grimur. Take a look around the island. Visitors normally like to go up to Lundaberg to look at the birds.” She gave him directions.
Kjartan nodded approvingly, and Ingibjorg said good-bye and walked toward her house at an even slower pace than before. Kjartan started his tour by taking a look around the village. The doors of the co-op were open, but there were no customers to be seen inside. A handcart loaded with several bags of cement was parked in front of the warehouse. The muffled murmur of the generator resounded from the basement, and the sound of a radio voice could be heard coming from the house next door. These sounds blended with the screeches of the birds on the rocks of Hafnarey.
An elderly woman in a canvas apron was spreading eiderdown on a concrete step above the pier, and an old man was painting a small boat that lay upturned on the edge of the cove. A face was watching him through the priest’s house’s window.
Kjartan sauntered off, following a narrow gravel path that meandered between the houses. There was a strong smell of chicken shit in the air that fused with the scent of the vegetation that had started to flourish nicely in the sunshine, sheltered by the walls of the houses. Garden dock, angelica, and long grass thrived on the fertilizer
