And there was a good chance that she had sabotaged her colleagues’ investigation into Áki’s activities. Her career as a detective inspector lay in smoking ruins. No wonder she wasn’t in any fit state to be working. Yet, in spite of everything, she persisted, too pig-headed to quit, caught up in a last race against time.
‘Of course I’ll take a look at them for you,’ Bjartur said, swivelling his chair round to face the desk, where he drew the papers from the envelope and spread them out in front of him. ‘Just give me a few minutes to run through them.’
‘Of course.’ On a sudden hunch, she added: ‘Could you pay particular attention to any mentions of somebody called Katja.’
‘Katja?’ he queried, still poring over the pages.
‘Yes, I gather she was a friend of hers.’
‘OK.’
‘You didn’t know her? Interpret for her?’
‘Nope.’
‘The thing is, she went missing.’
‘Went missing?’
‘Well, either that or did a disappearing act. She was a Russian asylum-seeker, too, and it occurred to me that the cases might be linked.’
‘OK. Nothing yet. This first document is just some kind of residence certificate from Russia; she must have brought it with her to prove her identity.’
‘Oh, I see,’ said Hulda, a little disappointed. She knew she was clutching at straws, but these papers were her last chance. ‘Please read them carefully,’ she added, as politely as she could.
‘Sure.’
Bjartur read on without speaking, his back to Hulda, while she perched uncomfortably on the edge of his bed, waiting in an agony of suspense. The silence dragged out interminably until finally Bjartur showed some kind of reaction.
‘Whoa,’ he said, and it was evident from his tone that he’d found something unexpected. ‘Whoa,’ he repeated.
‘What?’ Hulda got up and peered over his shoulder. He was reading the last sheet of paper, which was handwritten.
‘Have you found something?’ she demanded impatiently.
‘Well … I wouldn’t like to … though …’
‘What?’ she asked, her voice sharpening. ‘What does it say?’
‘She’s talking about a trip she made to the countryside with a friend who she refers to as K. Could it have been Katja?’
‘Yes, could be, could be.’ Hulda felt herself tensing with excitement. At last.
‘And someone … I’m not sure if it’s a man or a woman …’
‘Come on, out with it …’
‘She’s used an initial again. But from the context it looks like there was a man with them.’
‘What’s the initial?’
‘An A.’
XIX
He laughed.
‘Put the axe down and we’ll talk. You don’t have the guts to use it, anyway.’
Beside herself with terror, she braced herself against the door, brandishing the axe in front of her with one hand while groping for the door handle with the other.
He didn’t seem in the least fazed and took a step closer. Then, in one fell swoop, he was on her and had torn the axe from her hand.
For an instant, he stood quite still.
She was paralysed by fear, though all her instincts were screaming at her to get outside.
Then he lunged.
Had the axe hit her on the head? She experienced a split second of bewildered disbelief, still too numb with the cold to register what had happened.
Then, raising a hand to her scalp, she felt the hot blood seeping out.
XX
‘An A?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t mean …?’
‘That was my immediate thought, too,’ said Bjartur with a nod, looking dismayed.
Hulda said it out loud: ‘Albert?’
‘Yes.’
‘But maybe, maybe it was all perfectly harmless. Something to do with preparing their cases. Could he have been Katja’s lawyer, too?’
Bjartur shrugged. ‘It doesn’t sound harmless, though. She’s hinting at some kind of violence – this reads like an excerpt from a diary. Maybe she wanted to put it down in writing in case something happened. At least, I’m assuming Elena wrote this. She spoke very little English so, naturally, she’d have written in Russian.’
‘What, and Albert came across it, ignorant of what it contained, and passed it on to me?’
‘The irony,’ said Bjartur. ‘You know, I feel as if I’m in the middle of a whodunnit. I used to read a lot of those when I was younger.’ He grinned, as if relishing the role of detective’s assistant.
‘Christ …’ Hulda muttered. Which way was she to turn on this one? Was it conceivable that it was Albert himself, not his brother, who had something to hide?
‘Let me finish it,’ said Bjartur, and bent his head over the page again, nodding as he read: ‘Yes, yes.’ He was really getting into the role. ‘You know what?’ he said, raising his eyes from the paper. ‘I reckon I know where they went. It’s a bit of a way, about an hour and a half’s drive from Reykjavík.’ He mentioned a valley that Hulda hadn’t heard of, but then she was more into mountains herself: valleys didn’t hold the same thrill.
Bjartur went on: ‘It’s odd, though, because she mentions a house, but as far as I know, the valley’s uninhabited.’
‘Could you point to it on a map?’ Hulda asked.
‘I can do better than that: I can take you there,’ he offered eagerly. ‘I’ve got nothing else on.’
‘Yes, OK. Thanks. I’ll talk to Albert afterwards. Could you translate the document for me, word for word?’
‘Sure, I’ll tell you what it says while we’re driving. Er, could we go in your car? I don’t, er, I haven’t got quite enough in my tank to get us there.’
Life as a translator clearly meant only just scraping by, Hulda thought, feeling a twinge of pity for the man.
She got behind the wheel of her trusty old Skoda. Bjartur climbed into the passenger seat, where he acted as navigator, in between filling her in on the contents of the handwritten account. Elena had gone on a trip to the valley in the company of two other people,
