IV
Darkness had fallen in earnest now. After he had joined her at the top of the slope, they had walked over level ground for a while before pausing briefly to fix torches to their heads. Now, she could see clearly where she was placing her feet, but all else beyond the narrow cone of light was shrouded in darkness. When she asked if they were anywhere near the place where they were to spend the night, he shook his head. ‘Still a way to go,’ he said.
The snow was so perfect, glittering in the light of her head torch, that it seemed like sacrilege to tread on it and break the pristine crust. Never before had she experienced such an intense connection to nature. The icy fetters seemed to cast a mysterious enchantment over their surroundings. Focusing on the elemental beauty, she did her best to forget her reservations about the trip.
Before long, the hard, icy surface gave way to deeper, softer going. Stopping for a moment, she switched off her head torch and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dark. The faint outlines of snowy knolls and mounds could be glimpsed all around them, and it came home to her more starkly than ever that without her guide she would be utterly lost; she hadn’t a clue how to find the hut they were making for or retrace their steps to the car. Without him, she would almost certainly die of exposure out here.
She shuddered at the thought.
Switching on her torch again, she put her head down and set off doggedly in his wake. A gap had opened up between them and, picking up her pace, she tried to close it. She became reckless in her haste and, next thing she knew, the ground was giving way beneath her feet. Feeling herself sinking into soft snow, she started panicking that she had fallen into a hole and would never be able to get out. It turned out not to be as deep as she’d feared, but extricating herself from the clutches of the drift proved impossible, especially when weighed down by the backpack. She called out, first in a wavering voice, then louder, until he heard and, turning back, came to her rescue and heaved her out. On she went, trailing in his wake, hearing now and then the sound of water trickling under the snow, its gurgling providing a comfortingly familiar note amidst the inhuman silence of the mountains.
Abruptly, he halted, head turning this way and that, as if working out the lie of the land. She could just distinguish the dark shape of a mountain in the distance, its gully-scored slopes blurred by a layer of white.
She listened out for the river, but its gurgling had fallen quiet. Now, there was nothing but silence.
V
‘Looks like you’re in luck,’ said the duty sergeant, who had introduced himself as Ólíver. He was tall, without an ounce of spare flesh on his lanky frame. ‘Very lucky. Because that Syrian girl’s still here. We were going to put her on a plane this morning, but her lawyer kicked up a stink. You know what it’s like.’
‘Her lawyer’s not Albert Albertsson, by any chance?’ Hulda asked.
‘Albert? No, don’t know him. The lawyer handling the Syrian’s case is a woman.’
‘What’s her name?’
‘I can’t remember what any of these lawyers are called.’
‘No, I meant the asylum-seeker.’
‘Hmm.’ Ólíver frowned. ‘What was it again? … Amena, I think. Yes, Amena.’
‘Why are you deporting her?’
‘Some official’s made a decision. Nothing to do with me. I’m just responsible for seeing her on to the plane.’
‘Could I speak to her?’
Ólíver shrugged. ‘Don’t see why not. Though I don’t know if she’ll agree to meet you. I can’t promise anything. Unsurprisingly, the Icelandic police aren’t her favourite people right now. Why do you want to speak to her?’
He must have been thirty years younger than Hulda, but neither by his voice nor his manner did he display the slightest deference to her seniority. It was often like that these days and it never failed to rile her, the way the younger generation were taking over, rendering her redundant, as if her experience no longer counted for anything.
Hulda sighed impatiently. ‘It’s in connection with a case I’m investigating – an asylum-seeker found dead on the coast near here.’
Ólíver nodded. ‘Yes, at Flekkuvík. I remember. Me and my partner were called to the scene when the body was found. A foreign girl, wasn’t it? Couldn’t handle the waiting.’
‘She was Russian.’
‘Yeah, that was it.’
‘What do you remember about the scene?’ Hulda asked.
Ólíver frowned: ‘Nothing in particular. It was just another suicide, you know. She was lying there in the shallow water, obviously dead. There was nothing we could do. Why are you looking into this?’
She resisted the urge to tell him to mind his own business. ‘New information. I’m not at liberty to go into details.’ Leaning towards him, she whispered confidentially: ‘The whole thing’s a bit delicate.’
He merely shrugged again. His interest in the case clearly didn’t go very deep and Hulda also got the distinct impression that he had little faith in the ability of an old bag like her to handle a police inquiry.
‘All right, I’ll let you speak to her, since you insist,’ he said, as if addressing a naughty child.
Hulda had to bite back an angry retort.
‘But both our interview rooms are in use,’ he continued. ‘Would you mind talking to her in her cell?’
That brought Hulda up short. She was on the point of thanking him politely and walking out, abandoning this line of investigation, when she thought better of it. ‘Yes, all right, I suppose that’ll do.’ Might as well try to achieve something worthwhile during her last
