Abruptly, she was jolted out of her thoughts as the car skidded in the deep snow and, for one horrible moment, she thought they were going to veer off the road and roll over. Heart pounding, she braced herself for the impact. But her fears proved unnecessary, as the car righted itself.
The radio was emitting a flow of words that she couldn’t understand. It sounded like a monotonous recital of facts.
In the end, she felt compelled to ask what the announcer was saying.
‘It’s the weather forecast,’ her companion replied.
‘So what’s the forecast like?’
‘Not too good,’ he said. ‘They’re predicting a heavy snowfall.’
‘Shouldn’t we …’ She hesitated, then said it: ‘Shouldn’t we turn back, then?’
‘No way,’ he replied. ‘Bad weather will just add to the thrill.’
XV
When her phone rang, Hulda was standing by the hot-dog stand on Tryggvagata, grabbing a quick snack in the evening sun. This particular stand had been an important landmark in Icelandic cuisine for decades. Long before the concept of the takeaway was introduced to the country, its hot dogs had taken on the status of a national dish. Later, the stand had been given the international seal of approval when a former US president had stopped there for a hot dog while on a visit.
She couldn’t stop thinking about her conversation with Áki, though it was clear that he was nothing like the description of the man in the four-by-four who, according to Dóra, had picked Elena up.
A pity, as it would have been so handy, establishing a link with Elena and moving the case along.
She tried to answer her mobile without dropping her hot dog or spilling Coke, mustard, ketchup or remoulade down her jacket, a juggling act she had perfected through long practice. Hulda had been patronizing this van for years. It had always been popular but, recently, the queue had grown appreciably longer, thanks to the massive increase in tourist numbers. A crowd of them were now milling around it, either waiting to be served or struggling to eat their own hot dogs without dripping the contents down their fronts.
‘Hulda – Albert Albertsson here.’ The solicitor’s voice was as mellifluous as ever, inspiring trust from the first word, and for an instant Hulda let herself be lulled into believing that he had good news for her: surely a man with a voice like that couldn’t be the bearer of bad tidings?
‘Hello, Albert.’
‘How are you getting on with the … investigation?’
‘Reasonably well, thanks.’
‘Great. I thought I’d give you a bell because I’ve come across some paperwork relating to Elena. It was in my “filing cabinet” here at home.’ Hulda thought she detected a hint of irony when Albert mentioned the filing cabinet and, remembering the chaos in his office, guessed he’d found the papers at the bottom of some pile. But this was good news: additional documents might contain further clues, and she could do with some of those right now.
‘Excellent,’ she said.
‘I’ve got to go out to Litla-Hraun Prison tomorrow morning to meet a client, but I can take the papers to the office with me in the afternoon. Would you like to drop by then?’
Hulda thought for a moment. ‘No, I’ll come and pick them up now, if that’s OK. Did you say you were at home?’
‘Yes, I am, but I’m on my way out – I’m already late, in fact. Though if you’re in that much of a hurry, I suppose my brother could give you the paperwork. He lives with me. I’ll leave the envelope with him.’
‘Great. Where do you live?’
He gave her his address then asked again how the inquiry was progressing and if she really believed Elena had been murdered.
‘I’m convinced,’ Hulda told him, and rang off.
The evening was still young. Getting hold of the papers wasn’t quite as urgent as she’d led him to believe, but she felt a desperate need to keep herself busy. Anything was better than going home alone and trying in vain to get to sleep in the knowledge that she was one day closer to retirement, one day closer to the aching void of enforced inactivity that was all she had to look forward to.
XVI
Suddenly, she shivered, in spite of the heat in the car. She felt instinctively that she shouldn’t be here, that she had made a mistake in coming. Nothing concrete had happened to trigger this feeling, yet she found herself breathing unnaturally fast. Maybe it was the inhuman emptiness, the vastness of the landscape, the obliterating blankness of the snow?
‘Do you enjoy living here?’ she asked, to counter the incipient feeling of panic.
‘Of course,’ he replied: ‘Or at least I think I do. Though, having said that, the weather can be a bit tricky and we don’t get too many days of summer, but I sort of enjoy the cold, the snow. Maybe you can understand that, as a Russian?’
She just nodded.
‘I think you’ll learn to like it,’ he added, his voice friendly.
He was being nice to her; she shouldn’t be scared of him.
Of course, really, she was scared about her own future, about getting permission to stay in Iceland and what would happen if she didn’t.
She tried to relax, to breathe normally. She could worry about the future tomorrow, today she was determined to enjoy the trip. Everything would be just fine.
XVII
It was late summer, over a year after Jón had died.
Hulda was standing on top of Esja, the long, flat-topped mountain that reared up
