our time together and our nightlong conversations. I’ve missed him every day since I lost him.”
Johanna fell into a long silence and didn’t continue with her story again until Thorolfur signaled her to do so with a faint nod.
“Anyway, there was a funeral and a police investigation and finally a court case, and Kjartan was convicted. It gave me some outlet to be able to hate him, and I was pleased when he got his prison sentence. Of course, my studies went down the drain during that period, but I still managed to drag myself to school most days. It was then that Bryngeir took it upon himself to console me. I found him to be more considerate than I’d initially expected, and I was vulnerable to someone who seemed to really care for me. I got little support from my father at that time. The only job he could get was teaching in a secondary school, which of course was a total waste of his education and talents, so he got depressed and drank a lot. Bryngeir passed his school exams and started studying literature at university in the fall. I continued in the high school and we became an item that winter. Then we rented a small basement apartment in the west of Reykjavik and started living together. It lasted for four years and almost finished me off before it ended.”
“How’s that?” Thorolfur asked.
“After I moved in with Bryngeir, he soon started to control my life every minute of the day. I had to be at school during school hours and focus on nothing else but my homework and domestic chores when he didn’t need me for sex or whatever else popped into his mind. I wasn’t allowed to meet anyone else unless he was present. I wasn’t allowed to hold any opinions unless he approved them. I couldn’t make any decision regarding my life without him having the last word on it. When I got my high school exams, he decided I should study medicine because I was good at studying and it would be a good source of income for the home once I’d become a brain surgeon. He never laid a finger on me, but he could play me like a musical instrument with his words. With just a few sentences he could make me feel like I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and then with a few extra words he sent me crashing into hell again. The latter tended to be the norm, because he drank a lot, made a mess of our finances, and blamed me for every misfortune. All of a sudden the strings of the instrument snapped, and I had a nervous breakdown in the middle of a class in my second year at med school. I was taken to hospital and put into the psychiatric ward. An unusually perceptive psychologist realized what the situation was in our very first session and made me realize the relationship was life-threatening. I went straight home to Dad from the hospital. He shook himself out of his self-pity and started to take care of me. Bryngeir tried everything to win me back again, but I had regained my senses after four years of unconsciousness. Finally, after many weeks, he seemed to accept that our relationship was over and allowed me into the house to collect my clothes and textbooks. Naturally, I was slightly wary of him because he had threatened me with all kinds of awful things, but I was sure he wouldn’t lay a finger on me and thought that I was by now immune to him hurting me with his words, after my therapy with the psychologist. I therefore went to the meeting on my own. That was a big mistake.”
Johanna picked up a glass of water, lifted it to her lips, and held it there for a long moment without drinking. Finally, she took a small sip and carefully put the glass down again.
“When I’d finished packing my things into the case and was on my way out, Bryngeir asked me to hang on a moment and talk to him. He said he wanted to tell me about when he saw me for the first time. He’d read my article about the ambiguous Sarcastic Halli in the school magazine, as I’ve already mentioned. It was some kind of sexual turn-on for him to think that an eighteen-year-old high school girl could have written a text like that. He tracked me down at the school and decided on first sight that I had to be his. The fact that I had a boyfriend spoiled his plans a bit, but he found a way around it. He saw to it that Einar was invited to join the Jomsviking Society, and when the initiation meeting came up, he gave out loads of alcohol. So the kids were all extremely drunk by the time it was Einar’s turn to kneel under the sword. Bryngeir waited, prepared, behind his back, and just as Einar was about to dodge the swing of Kjartan’s sword, as was the tradition, Bryngeir kneed him and pushed him back under the blow. Einar died instantly, and the second half of the plan with me was easy once the boyfriend was no longer in the way. This is something Bryngeir just wanted to tell me for the fun of it, as a farewell gift, and even though I thought I was ready for anything, I couldn’t handle it. I tried going to the police, but I was just being hysterical in their opinion, and Bryngeir convinced them that I was just trying to wreak revenge on him for having broken up our relationship. It was his word against mine, and he was always very persuasive with everyone he was talking to. I should probably count myself lucky that I wasn’t charged and convicted for perjury. I can’t describe how I felt after that. Every single memory of our four-year relationship felt like a hideous rape. I went back to the psychologist again, and through years of therapy, he managed to teach me a way to free myself of the torment. The wound is obviously still there, but I don’t allow it to take a grip on me anymore and ruin my life.”
Johanna sank into a brief silence, took another sip of water, and then continued without looking at the policemen: “The strange thing is that I continued studying medicine. Bryngeir was right about one thing. It was easy for me to learn this profession, and one of the ways I found for clearing my mind was to totally immerse myself in my studies. But I was no longer studying to be a brain surgeon and studied psychiatry instead.”
Johanna was quiet again and stooped over the table. Finally she continued: “A few years after I broke up with Bryngeir, my father applied for a post at the university. When they decided to give him the job and notified him, the devil spotted yet one more opportunity. Bryngeir had been kicked out of university early on and fancied himself as some kind of journalist. I had, of course, told him everything about my father when we lived together, and he wrote a very twisted article about Dad’s abrupt departure from the Arnamagn?an Institute. It was then felt that it was undesirable for an old Nazi sympathizer to be teaching at the university, and the offer of the post was withdrawn. My father saw the last opportunity of a lifetime vanish into thin air. He drank relentlessly for half a year and eventually ended up in an asylum for the chronically medically ill.”
Johanna signaled that her story was over.
“But what’s a psychiatrist doing working as a local doctor all the way out here?” Lukas asked.
“By the time I’d finished my postgrad, my father had been diagnosed with incurable cancer. I wanted to nurse him myself, but also had to work to cover our living expenses. I therefore decided to apply for the first easygoing local doctor post that became available. By sheer coincidence it happened to be here in Flatey, and that suited us down to the ground. I’d never been here before and never imagined that this place would somehow be connected to my life through the Flatey Book. We’ve been comfortable here. I’m good at my job, and I was able to give my father the medication that kept him in a reasonable mental balance. As the cancer spread, he also had to follow a precise palliative treatment. He welcomed death in the end.”
“How did you react when you met Bryngeir here?”
“I didn’t meet him and had no idea that he was here until District Officer Grimur asked me to come to the churchyard to examine the body. I was quite surprised.”
“Quite surprised?”
“Yes. Bryngeir had always been fascinated by this ancient tradition of carving blood eagles on the backs of one’s enemies. I thought it was an odd coincidence to see him in that state.”
“So you were familiar with wounds of this kind?”
“I’d never seen them before, but the descriptions in the Flatey Book stood out in my memory. It was pretty clear what had happened.”
“A witness claims that Bryngeir intended to visit you the night before he was murdered.”
“He didn’t. I actually wasn’t at home, so I don’t know if he tried to get into the house.”
“Where were you that night?”
“I went out for a walk and went to the library to read.”
“Did you meet anyone there?”
“Kjartan came by.”
“How long were you in there?”
“Quite a long time. Until the early hours of the morning, actually.”
“That long? What were you both doing?”
“I told Kjartan about the Flatey Book.”
Grimur stuck his head into the classroom.
“Sorry, Thorolfur, but I can’t find the magistrate’s envoy.”
“You can’t find the magistrate’s envoy?” Thorolfur snapped in a temper.
“No, he seems to have vanished,” Grimur answered, bewildered. “I’ve been to most of the houses and sent messages to the others.”
“Did you go into the doctor’s house?” Thorolfur asked.
